Former and current FAO officials and academics have criticised the document, seen by Climate Home News, for pro-industry bias, cherry-picking data and even “disinformation” about the environmental impacts of animal farming. 

The FAO told Climate Home that a final version of the report – part of an assessment consisting of various documents – would be launched in 2025 and that conclusions should not be drawn from the draft text at this stage. 

Estimates of livestock’s contribution to greenhouse gas emissions vary, ranging from 12%-20% of the global total – mostly in the form of methane from ruminants like cows and sheep, and carbon dioxide (CO2) released when forests are cut down for pasture.  

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Methane, which is emitted in cow burps and manure, is a short-lived greenhouse gas that is 84 times more potent than CO2 over 20 years, making it one of the few available levers to prevent climate tipping points being reached in the near term.   

In a 2024 survey of more than 200 scientists and sustainable agriculture experts, about 78% said livestock numbers should peak globally by 2025 to start bringing down emissions and help keep global warming to internationally agreed limits.   

But the FAO’s draft study offers strong support for growth of the sector, saying livestock’s contributions to food security, nutrition and raw materials for industry make it a “linchpin for human well-being and economic development”.  

It is also described as “critical” for food security, “crucial” for global economies, and “indispensable” for development in sub-Saharan Africa.  

World Bank tiptoes into fiery debate over meat emissions

The report will be submitted to the FAO’s agriculture committee, which has 130 member nations, although the text could change as national representatives thrash out a final version. 

Private-sector lobbyists participating as advisors in national delegations are sometimes also able to influence texts under discussion, according to a July report by the Changing Markets Foundation. 

One FAO insider, who did not want to be named, told Climate Home the draft FAO report had been “biased towards pushing livestock [with] many national interests behind it”.   

The FAO receives around a third of its budget in direct donations from member countries, and the rest in voluntary contributions from the same states and other actors, including businesses and trade associations.   

Tech fixes  

The 491-page draft report, which was overseen by a scientific advisory committee of 23 experts and peer reviewers, does not assess how diets with more plant protein could improve food security.   

One advisory committee member, Professor Frederic Leroy of Vrije Universiteit Brussel, told Climate Home a shift to entirely plant-based diets “would severely compromise the potential for food security worldwide because many of the food nutrients which are already limited in global diets are found in livestock. How much you can move (away from livestock) should be the real investigation.” 

This table from a World Bank report (Recipe for a Livable Planet), published in May 2024, shows that vegan diets are the lowest in emissions (Screenshot/World Bank)

The report’s analysis assumes rising meat production as demand surges among a growing world population with higher incomes. In this context, it proposes “expanding the (livestock) herd size”, increasing production through intensified systems, better use of genetic techniques, and improved land management.   

“Technological innovations” such as feed additives and supplements to suppress methane are another idea backed by the FAO. Those could include experimental methods such as a vaccine announced last week and funded by a $9-million grant from the Bezos Earth Fund that aims to reduce the number and activity of methane-producing microbes in a cow’s stomach.    

Herdsman Musa takes cattle to graze along the Dodowa-Somenya road in Ghana, April 12, 2024. According to environmentalist Kwame Ansah, ‘The unchecked grazing is not only destroying crops but also eroding soil fertility exacerbating land degradation.’ (Photo: Matrix Images/Christian Thompson/via Reuters)

The report’s findings, once approved, will be fed into a three-part roadmap for bringing agricultural emissions in line with the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.  

The first instalment, published at the COP28 climate summit, was viewed internally by some FAO experts as a generic placeholder which largely followed an industry-friendly agenda.    

One ex-FAO official, who requested anonymity, told Climate Home the latest draft report on livestock ploughs a similar furrow and would set expectations for part two of the 1.5C roadmap.   

“The reality is that if they do a (nearly) 500-page report and put 23 experts’ names in front of it, it’s to impress you and say: ‘This is what is going to happen. We’re going to defend the sector’,” the former UN official said.  

Making the case for meat 

The expert added that the study’s panel was skewed toward intensified livestock systems and had “cherry picked” evidence to justify recommendations pointing in that direction.  

Several of the report’s advisory committee members have previously advocated for meat-based diets, and 11 of the study’s contributors work for the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), including one of the paper’s committee advisors.

According to the ex-FAO official, ILRI “has been pushing intensified livestock all its life. It’s their identity. It’s what they do.”

The institute co-founded an agribusiness-backed initiative – Pathways to Dairy Net Zero (P2DNZ) – which de-emphasised livestock emissions, framing them as just one of several problems for the industry to tackle.

ILRI did not respond to a request for comment.

IPCC’s input into key UN climate review at risk as countries clash over timeline

Shelby C. McClelland, of New York University’s Center for Environmental and Animal Protection, told Climate Home she was shocked by a repeated claim in the draft FAO report of “a lack of consensus among scientists regarding the contribution of livestock to global greenhouse gas emissions”.  

“This downplays and outright ignores overwhelming scientific evidence from the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change], high-profile papers, and other recent studies,” McClelland said. “A statement like this in a supposedly scientific and evidenced-based review by the UN FAO is alarming given their influence on agenda-setting for global climate action.”

Advisory committee member Leroy countered that it was “dangerous” to talk about a scientific consensus when the metrics used to measure methane compared to other greenhouse gases are constantly evolving.  

“This should be part of an open and transparent debate,” he added. “I don’t think we have reached consensus on the way we interpret the effects of livestock agriculture on climate change, the degree of it, how we can measure it and how we can deal with it.” 

Scientists at the FAO first alerted the world to the meat industry’s climate footprint when they attributed 18% of global emissions to livestock farming in the seminal 2006 study, Livestock’s Long Shadow. This analysis found that, far from enhancing food security, “livestock actually detract more from total food supply than they provide.”  

However, the paper sparked a backlash felt by key experts in the agency’s Rome headquarters, as the FAO hierarchy, industry lobbyists and state donors to its biannual $1-billion budget exerted pressure for a change of direction.      

By the time of last December’s COP28, the FAO’s stance had shifted so far that two experts cited in another livestock emissions study called publicly for its retraction. They argued it had distorted their work and underestimated the emissions reduction potential from farming less livestock by a factor of between 6 and 40. 

A deforested and burnt area is seen in an indigenous area used as cattle pasture in Areoes, Mato Grosso state, Brazil, September 4, 2019. (Photo: REUTERS/Lucas Landau)

No ‘carte blanche’ 

Guy Pe’er, a conservation ecologist at the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research and the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, accused the FAO of turning a blind eye to widespread “hyper-intensive grazing practices” and land use change caused by the world’s growing number of mega-farms.

“We’re currently using more land to feed livestock than humans, and that is causing rapid deforestation in Brazil. Ignoring that is outrageous. When an official organisation is producing disinformation like this, I find it extremely irresponsible,” he said.  

Leroy told Climate Home that different types of livestock farming should not be conflated. “If you have over-grazing and the pollution of water sources, that’s clearly wrong, but other types of animal agriculture are also net-positive [for the environment],” he said.  

If the advisory committee “sees advantages in having livestock agriculture as part of the food system, I think there’s a sound scientific basis to assume that,” he added. “It doesn’t mean that it’s carte blanche or ‘anything goes’ at all.” 

(Reporting by Arthur Neslen; editing by Megan Rowling and Joe Lo)

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Conservationists have challenged the road construction project in the East African nation’s courts since 2009, arguing it threatens the region’s rich ecosystem and wildlife. But in January, President William Ruto declared his government would proceed with the works, a decision critics said undermined his climate-friendly image on the global stage. 

The road – now a rough dirt track punctuated with mounds of elephant dung – dissects the Aberdare Forest in central Kenya, cutting through an expanse of dense woods mingled with thick bamboo and colourful alpine vegetation. It also crosses the mountainous Aberdare National Park, a haven for wildlife including lions, antelope and elephants. 

The government wants to widen and tarmac the picturesque road to connect the two agricultural counties of Nyandarua and Nyeri, which it says would reduce local travel time and the cost of farm produce while boosting tourism. 

Environmentalists argue that the potential negative consequences for the forest, biodiversity and climate change far outweigh the purported benefits.   

“I don’t feel that this is what we want to offer to the Kenyan people in terms of connectivity,” Christian Lambrechts, executive director of conservation trust Rhino Ark, told journalists during a trip to the Aberdare Forest in Nyeri County.  

“We feel that this road is not justifiable from a socioeconomic standpoint. It will cut the Aberdare ecosystem into two, and lead to road user-wildlife conflicts.”   

Rhino Ark Executive Director Christian Lambrechts addresses journalists in Nyeri County, Kenya, during a media tour of Aberdare Forest and National Park on February 29, 2024. (Photo: Joseph Maina)

Threat to wildlife and water

In March, the East African Wild Life Society – in response to Ruto’s decision to press ahead with the project – filed a fresh petition to a local court in Nyeri. It ordered the road’s construction to be put on hold, pending a hearing in early June. 

Conservationists are calling for the government to upgrade an alternative road instead, which largely skirts around the forest, saying it will still cut travel time while protecting wildlife and the Aberdare ecosystem that is vital for the water cycle. 

Enock Ole Kiminta, CEO of KeNAWRUA, a national organisation bringing together local water user associations, told Climate Home that expanding the Ihithe-Ndunyu Njeru road in the Aberdare Forest would destroy almost 400 hectares of indigenous forests and 327 water springs. 

It would also negatively impact close to 70 percent of local biodiversity, including endangered birds and animals, and elephant breeding areas, he added.   

“And yet the president appears to be saying, ‘To hell with you – go to court. We don’t care what the courts will say; we’ll still go ahead and do it’,” Kiminta said, before the latest suspension of the project.    

A scene in the Aberdare National Park, central Kenya, pictured on March 1, 2024 (Photo: Joseph Maina)

In January, the National Environment Management Authority approved the road’s construction in a surprise move, after earlier opposing it, and issued a license for the roadworks to the Kenya National Highways Authority (KeNHA).   

It did, however, give instructions to reduce the road’s width from 40 metres to 25 metres in sections traversing the Aberdare Forest and the Aberdare National Park.  

On a tour of the region that month, Ruto asked a local crowd if they wanted the road’s expansion to proceed or to wait for the court’s final decision. After gaining their backing, Ruto instructed government officials to allocate funds to push ahead immediately.   

Neither KeNHA nor the Kenya Wildlife Service responded to requests for comment for this article.  

International accolades  

Kenyan climate policy experts told Climate Home the Aberdare case symbolises a wider disconnect between Ruto’s vocal support for greater climate action on the global stage and decisions by his government that threaten natural ecoystems and carbon sinks at home.   

Ruto has pushed for more climate finance for the African continent and hosted the African Climate Summit last September in Nairobi, which secured $23 billion in funding for green projects for the continent.  

Last November, he made it onto Time Magazine’s list of the 100 most influential leaders driving business to real climate action. 

He also rolled out an ambitious plan in 2022 to plant 15 billion trees in Kenya by 2032, in a bid to reach 30% tree cover, with all ministries urged to allocate funds for the initiative.  

Loss and damage board speeds up work to allow countries direct access to funds

“His right hand doesn’t know what his left is doing,” said Kiminta. “He’s not being honest when he’s out of the country speaking all about climate change in rosy terms and doing something different on the ground.”   

While attempting to plant billions of trees, the Kenyan authorities have also been dishing out permits to timber dealers, Kiminta added. 

According to the Global Forest Watch monitoring service, tree loss in Kenya increased to 11,000 hectares in 2023, of which about 10,000 hectares was natural forest. That rise followed a two-year decline in 2021 and 2022, when the country recorded its lowest deforestation levels since 2001. 

Failed effort to lift logging ban  

The Aberdare row is not the first time Ruto has pitted himself against the justice system over decisions involving forests.  

Last July, less than two years after coming to power, he unilaterally lifted a six-year logging ban in the country’s forests, saying it would benefit local economies – sparking a legal backlash.  

The Law Society of Kenya (LSK) petitioned against the move, saying it disregarded the crucial role forests play in mitigating climate change, preserving biodiversity and safeguarding vital ecosystems. 

“It may be for lack of vision, foresight, or even commitment to sustainable development, but it is by all means a blow to Kenya’s environmental conservation efforts and international standing,” wrote Faith Odhiambo, the current LSK president, in a post on Twitter.   

The LSK argued the public had not been involved in the process leading to the decision to lift the ban, as stipulated in the constitution – and in October succeeded in its push for the Environmental and Lands Courts to void the president’s directive.  

Farmers tilling land cleared from the forest in Kinale on March 7, 2024 (Photo: Joseph Maina)

Indigenous rights 

Another row erupted last year over the Mau Forest Complex in Kenya’s Rift Valley, following an effort by the government to evict indigenous communities who have resisted such attempts for years.   

The evictions are part of an official strategy to protect Kenya’s principal water catchment areas, with speculation the latest round may also have been tied to a deal with UAE-based firm Blue Carbon to generate carbon credits for use under the Paris Agreement on climate change. 

The Mau – Kenya’s largest forest – has been the theatre of drawn-out conflict between the government and forest communities, particularly the Ogiek, a minority ethnic group that lays claim to the forest as its ancestral land.  

The African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights determined in 2022 that the state had violated the Ogiek’s rights over a substantial period and directed it to adopt appropriate measures to prevent the recurrence of abuses.   

But in a surprise twist last October, the government embarked on another forceful eviction of forest communities, including the Ogiek.    

Damaris Bonareri, an advocate of the High Court of Kenya and senior programme advisor for legal affairs at the Kenya Human Rights Commission, told Climate Home the Ogiek people are protected by the constitution and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights. 

“According to our constitution, the Ogiek have a right to be in that forest. The president is wrong,” she added, noting that Ruto has spoken about the country’s judiciary in ways that could turn public opinion against it. 

Indigenous lands feel cruel bite of green energy transition

The president has publicly defended his green agenda, and often ties climate change and its causes to the extreme weather hitting the country, including torrential rains that have caused severe flooding and landslides in recent weeks, killing around 230 people. 

“We must be careful on environmental issues,” Ruto told a political rally in March in Kericho, one of four counties covered by the Mau Forest, stressing that his administration would not permit people to graze animals or cultivate crops in forests. 

“You have heard about climate change. Kenya was almost destroyed by adverse weather conditions just the other year and it was because of environmental degradation,” he said.

(Reporting by Joseph Maina; editing by Megan Rowling)

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International oil companies, led by US firm ExxonMobil, plan to extract 11 billion barrels of oil from Guyana’s ocean floor and sell it abroad to be burned, thereby worsening global warming. The country pumped its first oil in 2020.

Despite this, late last month Guyanese president Irfaan Ali defended his country’s green credentials in a heated interview with the BBC’s Hardtalk programme, which went viral on social media. “Even with our greatest exploration of the oil and gas resources we have now, we will still be net zero,” he said, referring to the country’s greenhouse gas emissions.

“We have the lowest rate of deforestation in the world… Guyana will still be net zero”

President Irfaan Ali says Guyana won’t take lectures on climate change as it exploits its huge offshore oil and gas reserves

https://t.co/TKxhR6r3ur pic.twitter.com/xIJTgRsfZP

— BBC HARDtalk (@BBCHARDtalk) March 29, 2024

The case of Guyana shows how countries with large forests can use unclear rules on counting national carbon emissions to justify fossil fuel production.

Michael Lazarus, a scientist with the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), told Climate Home it is “absurd” to claim that capturing and storing carbon dioxide (CO2) in forests offsets the emissions impact of oil production, as “they have nothing to do with each other than geographic proximity”.

Official United Nations carbon accounting rules, drawn up nearly 20 years ago by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), allow Guyana to claim net-zero status because they do not specify which types of forest governments can take credit for preserving – and also because the emissions from oil are counted in the country where it is used and burned, not where it is produced.

Experts said governments are taking advantage of having barely-touched forests on their land that suck up CO2, and argued that fossil fuel-rich nations like Guyana should bear part of the moral responsibility for the emissions of their polluting products.

“The problem is that within the country, you are allowing the emissions to continue or even to rise, and then you are trying to balance that out internally by saying that we have this forest,” said Souparna Lahiri from the Global Forest Coalition.

Carbon-negative club

Around 93% of Guyana is covered in forest – more than any other nation but its neighbour Suriname. The population numbers just 800,000, mostly clustered on its coastline, and those people on average emit slightly less than the global average per capita.

Although the country’s non-forestry emissions are growing steadily, CO2 absorption by its vast forests more than compensates for that.

In its emissions inventory sent to the United Nations, the government claimed: “Guyana is a net carbon sink, with its lush managed forest cover removing up to ten times more than the emissions produced in the country up to the year 2022”.

Other small, sparsely-populated forest-covered nations like Suriname, Panama and Bhutan assert they are carbon-negative too.

While not claiming the same accolade, leaders of bigger forest nations like Russia and Brazil have also used their forests to defend their climate record.

In 2021, Russian President Vladimir Putin told a US-hosted summit: “Russia makes a gigantic contribution to absorbing global emissions – both ours and from elsewhere – owing to the great absorption capacity of our ecosystems.”

Despite rising Brazilian deforestation under Jair Bolsonaro, the former president told the same summit that the Amazon’s carbon absorption was evidence that “Brazil is at the very forefront of efforts to tackle global warming”.

Managed vs unmanaged

International carbon accounting rules essentially leave it up to governments to decide how much credit they claim for CO2 absorption by national forests, with many opting to count it all.

In 2006, scientists working with the IPCC came up with a distinction between “managed” land – where greenhouse gas emissions and removals should be attributed to humans and nations – and “unmanaged” land where forests are natural and governments should neither be credited nor blamed for emissions levels.

The IPCC defined “managed” land as “land where human interventions and practices have been applied to perform production, ecological or social functions”. Those could include planting a commercial forest, protecting a forest from fire, or designating it for conservation.

In its national emissions inventory report, Guyana does not differentiate between “managed” and “unmanaged land” – and claims credit for CO2 sequestration by all of its forests.

Guyanese forestry expert Michelle Kalamandeen told Climate Home the government is doing well at protecting the rainforest but should not classify it all as managed by the state. Much of it – particularly in the south – is inaccessible, so “they’re just relying on remoteness for protection of it”, she explained.

The Global Forest Coalition’s Lahiri agreed, saying that most of Guyana’s forest seems to be intact old-growth forest “so it is not a plantation or managed forest in that sense”.

A global issue

From this perspective, Guyana is by no means the only country that appears to be over-counting its emission sinks. A 2018 study in the journal Carbon Balance and Management found that over fourth-fifths of the 101 countries analysed counted all their land as managed.

Even those countries that make a distinction often counted all of their forest – but not all their land – as managed. Australia is one example.

Even the rare few that consider some of their forests “unmanaged” have drawn the line in different places.

Russia counts most of its forests as managed with a few exceptions, the US counts everything outside of Alaska (and much inside it) as managed, and Canada counts everything it tries to protect from fires.

The USA’s “managed” land (blue) and “unmanaged” land (grey) (Photos: Carbon Balance and Management)

Brazil stands out as the exception, counting just under half of its huge forests as managed and foregoing a carbon accounting boost from the other half.

Oil emissions

The other carbon accounting orthodoxy Guyana relies on is attributing emissions from burning fossil fuels like oil to the countries where they are burned, not where they are produced.

The vast majority of Guyana’s oil will be exported to regions like Europe and Asia or to neighbouring Brazil, meaning that emissions from its use will be counted there.

This way of measuring emissions prevents them from being double-counted – but it lets extracting nations off the hook for the carbon pollution caused by the fossil fuels they sell abroad.

Kalamandeen said oil-producing countries have some responsibility for the emissions created by the consumption of their fossil fuels, while the home nations of fossil fuel companies should also step up. In Guyana’s case, that would be the US and China, as the oil extraction consortium is made up of ExxonMobil, Hess Corporation and the China National Offshore Oil Corporation.

SEI’s Lazarus described the current system as an “essential accountability framework for governments and civil society” – but agreed that producers should be held morally accountable too.

Without that, he said, “we’d turn a blind eye to… the lock-in effects of long-lived fossil fuel supply investments that impede the global clean energy transition”.

The post Forest carbon accounting allows Guyana to stay net zero while pumping oil appeared first on Climate Home News.

It must be said: it is impossible to imagine Nigeria’s path to decarbonization without imagining it being fully lined with trees. There is a critical need to address deforestation, transform agricultural practices, and harness nature-based solutions like afforestation and reforestation if Nigeria were serious about reaching net zero by 2060 – a commitment the Nigerian government made at COP26 in Glasgow.

Nigeria is an oil giant in Africa, and unsurprisingly, most of its plans on decarbonization focus on the transition to renewable energy. Previously, Nigeria’s Energy Transition Plan had not considered the country’s emissions from the agriculture, forests, and land-use (AFOLU) sector.

However, our new report, which looks at different pathways for Nigeria to reach its net-zero-by-2060 goal, found Nigeria’s AFOLU sector has contributed the largest sectoral emissions at 30%, compared to the oil and gas sector at 29%. So while it is good that Nigeria has set its eyes on transforming the energy sector, it is also true that only in a renewable energy scenario that also transforms the AFOLU sector can Nigeria achieve its commitment of net zero by 2060 which will allow Nigeria’s economy to grow alongside reaching its sustainability goals.

“Two steps forward, two steps back” – Governments off course for forest protection target

One of the main drivers of Nigeria’s AFOLU emissions is land use, land-use change, and forestry (LULUCF). The last decade has seen relentless deforestation in Nigeria, with Global Forest Watch data revealing that from 2010 to 2019, Nigeria lost 86,700 hectares of tropical forest. Alarming as this may be, without immediate action, an additional 25% of our remaining forests could vanish by 2060. The cause of deforestation is a confluence of different factors, including the population’s lack of access to electricity and increasing poverty rates.

The stark reality is that nearly one in three people in the country lack access to electricity. This energy disparity leads many to rely on traditional, polluting methods for energy generation, such as burning wood. Additionally, less than a quarter of Nigerians have access to “clean cooking,” forcing the majority—primarily women—to rely on inefficient and polluting cookstoves, using wood for fuel.

This reliance on wood for energy generation and fuel is a significant driver of deforestation in Nigeria, and is also a major contributing factor to residential emissions. Improving access to clean cooking is not only pivotal in reducing emissions but also a crucial step towards mitigating deforestation.

According to the World Bank, four in ten Nigerians – or about 80 million people – were living in poverty in 2019. A report by Mongabay revealed that with lack of available jobs, Nigerian forests are being lost to farming and logging. Here, the message is clear: we can only save our forests and be truly on our way to net zero if we address poverty and social inequalities.

Reversing deforestation is not an impossible feat, but it demands a commitment to reforestation efforts – a 2.3% annual reforestation rate – and addressing other root causes of the problem including access to electricity, job creation, and a reduction in poverty.  With reforestation efforts, Nigeria can not only halt the degradation but also bolster its carbon sink capacity, a crucial element in achieving the net-zero goal by 2060.

The commitment to net zero is not just an environmental pledge but a blueprint for economic growth and prosperity that aligns with our broader sustainability goals. It is time for Nigeria to seize the opportunity and lead the charge towards a greener, more resilient future.

The post Nigeria’s path to net zero should be fully lined with trees – and fairness appeared first on Climate Home News.

The equivalent of ten football pitches of tropical forests – 3.7 million hectares – were lost every minute in 2023 as the result of human activities and natural disasters, according to analysis carried out by Global Forest Watch.

While forest destruction slowed dramatically in Brazil and Colombia, this was offset by sharp increases in Bolivia, Nicaragua and Laos.

“The world took two steps forward, two steps back when it comes to this past year’s forest loss”, said Mikaela Weisse, Global Forest Watch Director at the World Resources Institute (WRI).

Tropical forests are one of the world’s best defenses against global warming, as they absorb greenhouse gases. But they are also where over 96% of human-made deforestation occurs worldwide, according to WRI.

Missing targets

While total tree loss in the tropics decreased slightly last year, analysts estimated human-caused deforestation driven by agriculture, commodities extraction and urban expansion continued rising. 

That’s despite a 10% reduction being needed every year to meet a pledge to “halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030” signed by 145 countries, including large forest nations like Brazil, Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Initially introduced as part of a voluntary commitment by governments at Cop26 in Glasgow, the target was mentioned for the first time in a Cop decision at last December’s climate summit in Dubai.

Weisse said the goal “has always been an ambitious one” and “it will certainly be difficult” to ensure enough progress from all countries to meet the target.

“I still find a lot of hope in the fact that Brazil, Colombia, and Indonesia have managed to massively curb their rates of forest loss in recent years”, she added. “Those countries have demonstrated how critical it is to have strong political will to combat deforestation”.

Lula’s deforestation busting

Brazil continued to be the country that lost the most tropical forest in 2023 because of the size of its immense rainforests. But its losses dropped by more than a third last year, reaching the lowest level since 2015.

Progress in Brazil coincided with the return to office of President Luiz Lula da Silva. In his first full year in the post, he strengthened law enforcement against illegal loggers, revoked anti-environmental measures introduced by his predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, and extended Indigenous rights.

Brazil is planning to put the protection of forests at the heart of its climate summit in 2025, which is set to take place in Belém, known as the gateway to the Amazon rainforest.

“Holding Cop30 in the heart of the forest is a powerful reminder of our responsibility to keep the planet within our 1.5°C target”, said Marina Silva, Minister for the Environment and Climate Change, last December.

In neighbouring Colombia, the rate of tree loss dropped by half in 2023, primarily as a result of policies introduced by President Gustavo Petro.

Forest protection is among the goals being negotiated by the leftist government with armed groups as part of wider efforts to bring “total peace” and end decades of violence.

Experts have also suggested that criminal groups have taken it upon themselves to rein in illegal logging as a way to strengthen their hand in the discussions.

Progress lost

But positive developments in forest conservation in Brazil and Colombia have been all but cancelled out by tree losses spiralling out of control elsewhere.

In Bolivia, forest losses remained at record-breaking levels for a third year in a row, driven by uncontrolled expansion of soybean and beef production and exacerbated by exceptional wildfires.

The government, which has prioritised development and agricultural exports over forest protection, has not joined the 2030 pledge.

It was at loggerheads with Brazil at the Amazon Summit last year, when it opposed the inclusion of any references to the target in an outcome document signed by the leaders of eight countries.

Dramatic upticks in deforestation were also seen in Nicaragua, in Central America, and Laos, in South-East Asia, last year.

Expectations mount as loss and damage fund staggers to its feet

Nicaragua lost over 4% of its standing forest in 2023 alone, as the authoritarian regime of Daniel Ortega continued to turn a blind eye to illegal logging.

Disregard for the preservation of forests, and the respect of the rights of Indigenous people living there, is also shutting the country’s access to international financial support.

The UN’s Green Climate Fund pulled out of a forest conservation project last month after local community groups complained about a lack of protection in the face of escalating human rights violations in the area.

In Laos, forest loss nearly doubled last year reaching an all-time high. Rapid expansion of farming, primarily driven by Chinese investments, is believed to be the main cause.

Financial incentives

WRI’s Weisse said that, while the cases of Brazil and Colombia demonstrate the importance of political will in reversing deforestation, that alone will not be enough.

“Political winds continuously change”, she added. “In order for progress to endure in any of the above countries will likely take making it more valuable to keep forests standing than to cut them down”.

Carbon credits have long been touted as a primary way to achieve that. But their credibility has come under fire over the last few years as numerous schemes faced allegations of exaggerating climate claims and failing to safeguard local communities. Various efforts to strengthen their rules are underway.

Regulations are also being introduced on the demand side, blocking access to markets for goods produced on deforested land.

In the European Union, firms will soon have to demonstrate that seven commodities, including beef and soy, are not linked to deforestation. Commodities-producing countries, such as Indonesia, have attacked the regulations which they have branded as protectionist.

The post “Two steps forward, two steps back” – Governments off course for forest protection target appeared first on Climate Home News.

It is the first such decision the Green Climate Fund (GCF) has taken since its creation in 2010.

The GCF said on Thursday it had terminated its agreement with project developers after their failure to comply with its rules on environmental and social safeguards resulted in “legal breaches”.

In 2020, the fund committed $64 million to the programme run by the Nicaraguan government and the Central American Bank for Economic Integration (CABEI), which aimed to reduce deforestation in the UNESCO-designated Bosawás and Rio San Juan biosphere reserves.

The GCF said it had not paid out any funds before terminating its support for the project and no activities had yet taken place.

Community groups warned that the project was going to be carried out in reserves being deforested by a massive invasion of settlers that use violence against Indigenous people with impunity due to weak law enforcement action. They worried that the programme – which was to be overseen by state authorities – would worsen those conflicts and fail to protect the rights of Indigenous communities.

Amaru Ruiz, director of the Nicaraguan organisation Fundación del Río, which supported the affected communities, welcomed the decision by the GCF.

“This sets a precedent globally for the functioning of the fund,” he said. “It is also a recognition of the struggle and resistance of the Indigenous people and Afro-descendant communities of Nicaragua, and it shows that there is a window of opportunity to insist on the fact that climate projects must not violate human rights.”

Fuelling conflicts

The decision concludes a grievance process that has lasted nearly three years since a coalition of local and international NGOs filed a complaint with the GCF. They accused the project of fuelling a violent conflict between Indigenous communities and settlers who were grabbing land to farm cattle and exploit resources, as well as failing to consult local people.

The Bosawas Reserve in Nicaragua has been hit by illegal mining and logging despite protected status. Photo: Rebecca Ore

Independent legal observers have documented repeated attacks against Indigenous people in the area with dozens murdered, kidnapped or raped over the last few years.

An investigation by the GCF’s independent complaint mechanism deemed their concerns justified. It found a series of failures with the project that could “cause or exacerbate” violent conflict. The probe also highlighted a lack of due diligence on conflict risks and human rights violations and the absence of free and informed consultations with Indigenous communities before the project’s approval.

The GCF said it was unaware that the project was not in compliance with its policies at the time of its approval and that new evidence had subsequently been brought to light.

Late-stage consultation

Following the internal investigation, the GCF board agreed last July to suspend the project until it addressed local concerns and fully respected the fund’s policies and procedures. It effectively gave the project developers one last chance to fix the problems.

In an attempt to remedy the issues, CABEI carried out a consultation and engagement process with local communities between August and September. The project developer said a total of 5,550 people participated in 69 events across the region.

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But NGOs criticised it as a “sham”, saying participants were only provided with a brochure in Spanish – a foreign language for many Indigenous people – and were given limited freedom to debate the proposal.

“There’s been an increase in militarisation in the territory,” said Ruiz. “At least eight Indigenous community forest guards were detained after they had denounced the situation of encroachment on their territory”.

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Since 2007, Nicaragua has been ruled by an authoritarian regime led by President Daniel Ortega. His administration has been responsible for “widespread and systematic human rights violations that amount to crimes against humanity”, according to the United Nations Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua.

CABEI detailed in a report sent to the GCF in October the steps that had been taken to make the project compliant with its rules. But the fund’s secretariat, its administrative arm, found the issues were not addressed to its satisfaction and decided to terminate its participation in the programme.

It communicated the decision to its board members at a meeting in Kigali, Rwanda, this week.

Lesson for the future

The GCF secretariat says it is now committed to working collaboratively with CABEI and the Nicaraguan government to “develop a clear strategy to conclude the project in an orderly and responsible manner”. That will include informing people on the ground and “managing the expectations” of the potential beneficiaries.

CABEI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Florencia Ortúzar, a lawyer at the Interamerican Association for Environmental Defense (AIDA), said she hoped the GCF would learn a lesson from this case.

“It is a reminder of the importance of including local communities from the very beginning of project design,” she told Climate Home. “The GCF policies and safeguards exist to prevent those regrettable situations and must be implemented rigorously and consistently.”

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Not long ago Poland embodied Europe’s worst nature-destroying tendencies. 

The post While Europe’s green backlash grows, Poland tells different story appeared first on Climate Home News.

A building has been rented and equipment is being purchased for the center that will have police representatives from the other seven countries of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO).

The Center for International Police Cooperation (CCPI), now scheduled to be up and running in the first quarter of this year, will be financed with 9 million reais ($1.8 million) from the Amazon Fund, a multinational donation effort started by Norway to help finance sustainable development in the Amazon.

The center will fight drug trafficking and the smuggling of timber, fish and exotic animals, as well as deforestation and other environmental crimes, Humberto Freire, head of the Federal Police’s Environment and Amazon department, said in an interview on Friday. Illegal gold mining on protected reservations of Indigenous peoples like the Yanomami, will also be a priority, he said.

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Uniting the Amazon countries against criminal activity in the world’s largest tropical rainforest is key to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s effort to restore Brazil’s environmental credentials after four years of soaring deforestation under his hard-right predecessor, former President Jair Bolsonaro.

Brazil will share with its Amazon neighbors the technology the Federal Police is developing to trace the origins of gold illegally extracted by wildcat miners in the rainforest, Freire said.

This technology, which should establish the “DNA of gold,” uses radioisotopes to determine what prospect the gold comes from by checking particles of the metal, ore or dirt against samples collected from gold mining areas across Brazil, a vast mapping process that is near completion, he said.

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ACTO members will be asked to do the same mapping of samples on their countries, Freire said.

The police developed the technology with the University of Sao Paulo and has 50 million reais from the Amazon Fund to implement a program that will require a radioisotope scan, possibly from Japan, and handheld radioisotope identification devices to be used in ports and airports, he said.

The Brazilian government wants to spend some of the Amazon Fund on paving a road through the rainforest, a move critics say will worsen forest destruction. Two major donors – the US and Germany – have warned the fund’s board against approving this spending.

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Nearly two years on, Climate Home News looks at how these commitments are holding up to the test of time.

• Methane Pledge
• Forest Pledge
• International Fossil Finance Pledge
• Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ)

METHANE PLEDGE

WHAT: Reduce human-made methane emissions by 30% between 2020 and 2030. Cutting the amount of methane present in the atmosphere is important because it is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide despite having a shorter lifespan.

WHO: 104 countries, led by the US and the EU, signed up to the pledge when it was first announced at Cop26 in Glasgow. The number of signatories has since risen to 150. However, they only represent about half of global methane emissions as China, India and Russia – three of the world’s top four emitters – have not joined the coalition.

HOW IT IS GOING: The raw figures paint a fairly grim picture. Since Cop26, the concentration of methane in the atmosphere has kept rising fast and it is now more than two and a half times its pre-industrial level.

Over half of the emissions come from human activities, like fossil fuel extraction, farming and landfills, with the rest caused by natural sources. Under current trajectories, total human-made methane emissions could rise by up to 13% between 2020 and 2030 – the pledge’s timeframe.

This graph shows the globally-averaged, monthly atmospheric methane concentration since 1983. Image credit: NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory

Targeting the oil and gas sector is seen by many as the easiest and fastest way to bring down emissions in the near term. Experts say existing technologies already provide cheap and effective ways to plug leaky infrastructure like pipelines and gas storage tanks.

However, the technological developments have not yet been converted into real, widespread action. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), methane emissions from oil and gas remained “stubbornly high” in 2022 even as the energy companies’ bumper profits made actions to reduce them cheaper than ever. “There is just no excuse”, the IEA chief Fatih Birol commented.

Raft of initiatives

But judging the pledge’s progress on current numbers only tells half the story, argued Jonathan Banks, global director of the methane programme at the Clean Air Task Force (CATF). “Emissions are not going to turn around immediately,” he told Climate Home. “If you look at the work going into the pledge, building the funding and technical resources to bring emissions down, I think it could potentially be on track for success”.

A series of initiatives have been set up to help countries deliver on the pledge. The UN’s Climate and Clean Air Coalition (CCAC) is helping over 30 developed and developing countries to establish plans to achieve the 2030 target.

Canada has set out a strategy that it expects to reduce domestic methane emissions by “more than 35%” by 2030, compared to 2020.

Methane leaking from Chelmsford compressor station, UK on 15 October 2021, picked up by a special camera (Photo: Clean Air Task Force/ James Turitto)

The Global Methane Hub (GMH), a philanthropic organisation, is also supporting signatories of the methane pledge with technical assistance and funding. Carolina Urmeneta, a director at the GMH, told Climate Home News that over the last year, the group has focused its work on developing systems to monitor methane emissions rates from oil and gas and landfill installations using satellites.

She said reaching the 2030 target “is possible and cost-effective, but it is not easy. We need to improve data transparency and increase funding for projects with methane targets.”

Regulations drive

Some progress has also been made on the regulatory front. The USA introduced new rules to address methane emissions caused by oil and gas companies through the Inflation Reduction Act. Using a carrot-and-stick approach, it provides $1 billion in public subsidies to take action, while charging a fee for excessive emissions.

In May the European Parliament agreed on tougher measures to tackle methane emissions in the energy sector. The approved text calls for binding emission reduction targets, stronger obligations for fossil fuel operators to detect and repair leaky infrastructure and the application of the same measures to exporting countries outside of the bloc.

While the final rules are still being negotiated with the EU’s national governments, CATF’s Banks believes they could have a “huge global impact” if introduced in their current form. “The methane emissions associated with the gas Europe buys from the rest of the world is quite large, so such measures could really drive some change”.

New announcements are expected at Cop28 in Dubai, after the summit’s president Sultan Al Jaber set the phaseout of methane emissions in oil and gas by 2030 as one of his priorities. “More than 20 oil and gas companies have answered Cop28’s call,” he said this week. “And I see positive momentum as more are joining”. But the UAE has been accused of double standards as it failed to report methane emissions to the UN for a decade, as the Guardian reported.

While it has not signed the pledge, China is expected to announce its long-awaited methane plan at Cop28.

FOREST PLEDGE 

WHAT: End and reverse deforestation by 2030. Country leaders pledged to conserve forests, tackle wildfires, facilitate sustainable agriculture, support indigenous populations and “significantly” increase the provision of finance towards achieving those goals.

WHO: More than 140 countries joined the coalition. Signatories of the pledge – including large forest nations like Brazil, Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of Congo – cover around 90% of the world’s forests. But major G20 powers such as India, South Africa, Saudi Arabia and rainforest nations like Bolivia and Venezuela did not join the group.

HOW IT IS GOING:  Countries remain off track to reach the goal of the Glasgow pledge and end deforestation by 2030, according to an assessment done by a coalition of NGOs.

Across the world, tree loss recorded in 2022 was 21% higher than the level needed to be on course to reach zero in seven years’ time, the report said.

Source: Forest Declaration Assessment

In fact, the situation is getting worse. Global deforestation grew 4% last year, wiping out 6.6 million hectares of forest, according to the study. That’s a tree-covered area nearly as big as Ireland disappearing in one year.

“The world’s forests are in crisis. All these promises have been made to halt deforestation, to fund forest protection. But the opportunity to make progress is passing us by year after year,” said Erin Matson, a lead author of the Forest Declaration Assessment.

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There are important regional differences, however. While tropical Asia is faring better, with Indonesia and Malaysia on track to hit their targets, Latin America and the Caribbean are farthest off track.

The election of President Lula da Silva in Brazil has led to a reversal in the skyrocketing deforestation rates in the country, which hosts most of the Amazon rainforets.

But efforts to create a regional forest protection coalition have failed. At the Amazon summit in August, eight South American countries failed to agree on a pledge to end deforestation by 2030 following opposition from Bolivia and Venezuela.

An aerial view shows deforestation near a forest on the border between Amazonia and Cerrado in Nova Xavantina, Mato Grosso state, Brazil in 2021 (REUTERS/Amanda Perobelli)

While it included a larger number of countries, the Cop26 commitment was not entirely new: it repeated promises previously made in the 2014 New York Declaration on Forests, which by then had already failed to achieve some of its core targets.

Keen to avoid the same fate, self-declared “high ambition” countries launched a new initiative designed to deliver the pledge.

“High ambition” efforts

Chaired by the USA and Ghana, the Forest and Climate Leaders’ Partnership (FCLP) has promised to spur global action and provide accountability.

Only a fifth of the original 140 signatories have joined the group so far, with Russia and Indonesia among the most notable absentees.

Christine Dragisic, who leads the forest team at the US State Department, said the goal is to create a “high-level community” that brings together governments, indigenous people, philanthropies, civil society and the private sector to drive action forward and hit the 2030 target.

“Can we do it? Yes. Is it going to be hard? Definitely. Does it require everybody to be at the table? For sure”, Dragisic told Climate Home.

An Indonesian ranger patrols a forest protected through a carbon credit project. Photo: Dita Alangkara/CIFOR

Since its launch last year, the FCLP has worked on a number of initiatives offering technical and financial solutions to forest nations, looking at the role of carbon markets and the forest economy in averting tree loss.

Finance gaps

As with most climate actions, however, it ultimately comes down to the question of money. “The delivery of climate finance is very important to achieve a lot of these targets and that is still very much lacking”, Roselyn Fosuah Adjei, director of climate change at Ghana’s forestry commission and co-chair of the FCLP, told Climate Home.

“The kind of finance we need is not finance for today or tomorrow, it’s finance for yesterday. We are already behind schedule. If it gets delivered fast there’s lots that we can do to close the gap that is now quite wide,” she added.

The Cop26 pledge was accompanied by a commitment from a group of rich nations to provide $12 billion in forest-related climate finance between 2021 and 2025. The money should be channeled to developing countries enacting concrete steps to halt forest loss.

The donor countries reported last year that they had provided $2.6 billion – over a fifth of the target amount – in 2021. They are expected to provide an update at Cop28.

INTERNATIONAL FOSSIL FINANCE PLEDGE

WHAT: End new direct public support for the international unabated fossil fuel energy sector by the end of 2022, except in limited and clearly defined circumstances that are consistent with a 1.5°C warming limit and the goals of the Paris Agreement.

WHO: 34 countries and five development banks – predominantly from wealthy cuontries – signed up to the pledge at Cop26. These included the G7 nations – with the exception of Japan – and most EU member states.

HOW IT IS GOING: Among the signatories that give lots of money to the energy sector, the vast majority have introduced policies in line with the promise made in Glasgow.

The United Kingdom, France, Denmark, New Zealand, Canada, Finland and Sweden have stopped providing loans and guarantees for oil and gas extraction and processing overseas through their export credit agencies.

Their actions have shifted at least $5.7 billion per year in public finance out of fossil fuels and into clean energy, according to analysis by Oil Change International and E3G.

On the other hand, however, the USA, Italy and Germany have continued funding international fossil fuel projects in 2023 in breach of the pledge.

They were supposed to stop funding foreign fossil fuels by December 2022. But since then, they collectively approved over $3 billion in financial support to oil and gas overseas programmes.

Most of the funding comes in the form of state-backed guarantees provided by export credit agencies. These products limit the risk taken by companies selling services and goods in other countries, influencing investment.

Among the projects receiving backing from the US and Italy was the expansion of an oil refining facility in Indonesia’s Borneo.

The US Export-Import Bank justified its backing of the project by claiming it would allow Indonesia to reduce its reliance on imported fossil fuels. The Italian agency did not provide a motivation for the decision.

Germany and the US have also poured hundreds of millions of dollars into projects aiming to boost the production and trade of liquified natural gas (LNG), which has been more sought after since Russia invaded Ukraine and Europe cut back on Russian gas.

Political splits and carve-outs

In the US, efforts to comply with the Glasgow pledge have caused a split among senior officials in the Biden administration and in the federal agencies charged with disbursing the money, as Politico revealed.

The White House has drafted guidance underpinning the investments - without making it public -, but the final decisions are made by agencies like the US Export-Import Bank (Exim).

“It is a struggle to get US Exim to comply, so far they’ve ignored the Cop26 commitment”, says Nina Pusic from Oil Change International. “It will require a lot of political weight from the Biden administration and Congress.”

Indonesia delays coal closure plans after finance row with rich nations

Italy looks likely to keep funding fossil fuels overseas for years to come. Its policy guidance lays out a "gradual dismission of public support to new requests of fossil fuel projects", seeing support for gas extraction and production run into 2026. Oil processing and distribution projects should be excluded from the beginning of next year.

But Italy has also carved out a wide range of exceptions that allow its export credit agency to keep greenlighting support for fossil fuel projects on "national energy security" and "energy efficiency" grounds.

The FSRU Toscana LNG regasfication platform off the coast of Italy (Photo: OLT Offshore LNG Toscana)

Germany's main export credit agency has just introduced this month new policies restricting support for fossil fuel projects. However, it allows for financing the development of new gas fields and related transport facilities until 2025 when justified by "national security and in compliance with the Paris Agreement targets".

Investment in new coal, oil and gas production is regarded as incompatible with limiting global warming to 1.5C, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA) and a large number of climate scientists.

"Germany has a vast amount of fossil fuel transactions pending approval", says Oil Change International's Pusic. "The success of the new policy will be judged on the decisions made on those projects".

GLASGOW FINANCIAL ALLIANCE FOR NET ZERO (GFANZ)

WHAT: Commit to achieving net zero emissions by 2050 at the latest by aligning their portfolios and investment practices with the goals of the Paris Agreement.

WHO: Over 650 institutions across the financial sector, including banks, insurers, asset owners, asset managers, financial service providers, and investment consultants. Gfanz members represent 40% of global private financial assets. They are grouped together under eight independent net-zero financial alliances focused on specific branches of finance.

HOW IT IS GOING: It is not easy to gauge the progress of a wide-ranging initiative with loosely defined targets and a constellation of constituent parts.

GFANZ says it has made progress over the last two years by raising the ambition of financial institutions and by providing tools and guidance to turn commitments into action.

"Two years ago, not a single bank had set a science-based 2030 target. Now nearly all global, systemically important banks have voluntarily and independently set 2030 targets for oil and gas", a GFANZ spokesperson said.

Above all, the mere fact that the alliance still exists at all is a first - albeit limited - marker of success, after an especially tumultuous year.

The prospect of ending up in legal hot waters in the US, where Republicans have driven an anti-climate investment backlash, has dampened the enthusiasm of many leading signatories. The result is that parts of the alliance have been hemorrhaging members, while other components have resorted to watering down their requirements to assuage concerns.

Mark Carney, former Bank of England governor, launched GFANZ at Cop26. Photo: World Economic Forum/Valeriano Di Domenico

Troubles started brewing in mid-2022 when a group of leading US banks threatened to pull out over fears of being sued because of having decarbonisation policies imposed by external parties. That's after US Republican politicians had accused financial institutions of breaching antitrust rules by grouping together in a climate cartel that limits opportunities for investors.

A month later, in October 2022, Gfanz dropped a key requirement for its members to sign up to the UN Race to Zero initiative - a verification body for corporate and financial sector pledges - which had been seen as a way to prevent greenwashing.

GFANZ told Climate Home that the alliances are still working with Race to Zero and "continue to note" its advice and guidance.

Heading for the door

Those US banks eventually ended up staying in but, despite the less stringent criteria, other influential members began heading for the door in droves soon after.

Vanguard, one of the world's biggest asset managers, quit the Net Zero Asset Managers' initiative - part of Gfanz - saying it wanted to "provide clarity to investors" and "speak independently on matters of importance" to them.

But it's the insurers' coalition, known as NZIA, that has suffered the biggest - nearly fatal - wounds. The group has lost nearly two-thirds of its members since the start of the year, with leading firms like Allianz, Zurich, Munich Re and Lloyd's of London throwing in the towel.

Again a major driver for the mass exit was a letter written in May by 23 Republican attorney generals accusing signatories of advancing "an activists climate agenda" with "serious detrimental effects on the residents" of their states. The spark for this was the alliance's initial obligation to its members to set emission reduction targets by the end of July.

Staring at the real prospect of shutting down, the insurers' alliance again watered down its requirements, becoming effectively toothless.

To triple renewable energy, the Global South needs finance

"NZIA member companies have no obligation to set or publish targets", wrote the UN Environment Programme (Unep) - convener of the initiative -  in a clarification letter. "Each company who chooses to be a member of the NZIA unilaterally and independently decides on the steps on its path towards net zero."

Meanwhile, GFANZ says its members have submitted over 300 interim targets "representing clear progress in implementing commitments" to divert finance in line with net zero goals.

But while plans have been announced, many GFANZ members are also being accused of not putting their money where their mouth is. 161 members of the coalition have collectively invested hundreds of billions of dollars into the expansion of the coal, oil and gas industries since they joined the group, according to research by campaigning group Reclaim Finance.

A GFANZ spokesperson said "it’s clear a lot of work still needs to be done to ensure the world is deploying capital consistent with a 1.5C pathway".

"GFANZ is helping to support financial institutions to each set their own sectoral targets and develop transition plans and release guidance on their plan for a managed phaseout of fossil fuels," they added.

The article was amended on 6/11 to add comments from GFANZ received after publication

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Its supporters claim it has been doing exceptionally well. The Cambodian government hailed it as the “most successful” community-based forest conservation scheme on the carbon market and a climate solution.

Satellite images tell a different story. Tumring is experiencing dramatic deforestation, losing over 22% of trees in the project area since the scheme began. The Cambodian government does not account for this loss in official monitoring reports.

Nor is this an isolated case. In a joint investigation, Climate Home and Unearthed, Greenpeace UK’s investigative journalism unit, found similar discrepancies in two Brazilian projects, based on data from two different satellite monitoring platforms. Companies like Uber, ArcelorMittal and Marathon are still using credits from these three projects to offset their emissions – and there is nothing to stop them.

It raises serious questions for Verra, the largest standard setter in the voluntary carbon market, which oversees the projects.

Project owners disputed the findings, while Verra said it “is committed to refining and improving its methodologies based on the best available science and data”.

Mind the gap

By protecting trees the Tumring project generates carbon credits – or offsets – which are then used by polluters to compensate for their own emissions elsewhere. Texan oil firm Marathon is a major buyer, while the Cambodian and Korean governments, project partners, are planning to use a portion of the credits as part of their national net zero plans.

But the emissions avoided through the project are likely to be overstated given the deforestation rate appears to be higher than claimed. Project owners recorded just 3,450 hectares (ha) of forest loss in monitoring reports between 2015 and 2019, the most recent data submitted. Our analysis using the online tool Global Forest Watch showed forest loss was four times higher in that period, at 14,000 ha.

Climate Home and Unearthed looked at offsetting projects after a source raised concerns about apparent discrepancies between what project owners were declaring in their monitoring reports, and what could be seen through satellite images.

The team compared project filings with data developed by the University of Maryland and made available on the Global Forest Watch online platform. A second source of satellite data, Forobs, developed by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, was used to check the findings. This showed a similar trend.

Redd+ weaknesses

Verra is a major proponent of the UN-backed scheme Redd+, which stands for “reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries”. It is designed to protect areas at risk of being deforested. Companies can buy carbon credits from these projects to discount their own emissions.

Critics have long raised concerns about weak quality control of this kind of project. An investigation published by The Guardian and Die Zeit earlier this year alleged more than 90% of Verra’s Redd+ projects were not driving emission reductions, largely because developers exaggerated the threat forests were facing. Verra disputed the findings.

Climate Home and Unearthed found that, in addition to inflated baselines, underreporting of forest loss throughout a project’s lifetime and light-touch regulation can lead to far too many credits being generated.

“The findings point out deep flaws in the forest carbon offset mechanism”, said Souparna Lahiri, a climate adviser for the Global Forest Coalition. The fact deforestation is increasing, instead of going down, “is deeply concerning” and “strengthens our conviction that the mechanism of offsetting cannot be fixed”, he added.

Self-reported deforestation

Each carbon credit represents a ton of CO2 kept from being released into the atmosphere by protecting trees. If a larger portion of forest is cleared than project developers claim, the volume of emissions they avoid will be overstated. When used by companies or governments to compensate for their emissions elsewhere, these credits would have a negative climate impact.

Verra says its role is to make sure that, when a company does invest in a carbon project, it has integrity and meaning, verified by the best standards and science. Monitoring reports are a crucial part of how progress is measured, since they disclose setbacks such as rising deforestation.

Monitoring reports are audited by third parties, then submitted publicly on a project’s page, alongside a host of other documents. In practice, they can be difficult for the public to understand and evaluate. There’s no standardised way to monitor projects.

The way the Cambodian government and its partners monitor deforestation in the Tumring area is opaque. They use national land cover data produced by Cambodia’s environment ministry that is not available publicly. It has a low tree cover threshold, meaning an area needs as little as 10% of trees to be counted as forested. To put it another way, you could chop down 90% of tree cover in a previously untouched section and still claim the forest was intact.

Cambodia has one of the highest deforestation rates in the world, according to Global Forest Watch. Photo: Un Yarat / US Embassy Phnom Penh

The Cambodian government has previously tried to discredit independent analysis showing that deforestation is higher in the country than state records.

Wildlife Works, which worked as a technical consultant for project validation and verification, said it “had no connection to the project” since completing the job and directed questions to the Cambodian government.

The Cambodian government did not respond to a request for comment. The Korean government told Climate Home and Unearthed that only credits from 2021 onwards would be used to offset national emissions.

Industry transparency

The Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market, an independent governance body for the industry, has called for greater transparency, urging offsetting projects to make all their information accessible to a “non-specialised audience” so a project’s climate impact can be better assessed.

Gilles Dufrasne, from the NGO Carbon Market Watch, said: “Current practice on the market simply isn’t up to standard and this lack of transparency needs to be plugged. More credible, and transparent, use of forest monitoring data is part of this.”

Sylvera, a carbon offsets analytics provider, noted in its 2022 State of Carbon report that the majority of the company’s D-rated projects, of which Tumring is one, “grossly under-reported the deforestation in the project area and have exceeded the baseline emissions”.

Samuel Gill, Sylvera co-founder and president, told Unearthed and Climate Home: “The technology to largely resolve issues like underreporting or overcrediting already exist and are being deployed.” He added: “These improvements take time to filter through the system and in the next few years we should see considerable uplift in project quality as a result.”

In theory, Verra already has various mechanisms to prevent worthless credits linked to deforestation from flooding the market and to punish project developers responsible for any irregularities.

Project owners are required to set aside in a “buffer pool”: a portion of credits that cannot be traded on the market. These act like an insurance policy: if trees meant to be protected end up being felled or burned in a fire, credits in the pool should be cancelled to ensure the integrity of the credits previously sold for offsetting purposes.

Additionally, complaints may trigger a project review and, if a developer is found to have issued too many credits, it can be sanctioned or made to pay a compensation.

But carbon market experts have doubts over the effectiveness of the system, saying the size and use case of buffer pools may be too limited. Only one project has ever had credits from the buffer pool cancelled, according to the Verra register.

Recurring problem

Over 17,000 kilometres away from Tumring, the Rio Preto-Jacundá Redd+ project is meant to achieve the same goal and protect an area of the Brazilian Amazon state of Rondonia.

The project has sold more than one million credits, with big name buyers including German utility Entega, Bank of Santander’s Brazilian arm, and Brazilian financial services giant Banco Bradesco.

From when it began in 2012 to 2020, the latest year available in monitoring reports, the project recorded 5,884 ha of loss, with a sharp increase from 2016. Global Forest Watch data shows it lost 8,200 ha of forest – 33% higher than the numbers declared by the project owner, Biofílica Ambipar.

The scheme’s “without project” scenario, to show what would happen under business as usual, predicted 9,922 ha of loss in the same period.

‘On watch’

Sylvera, an offsetting rating agency that independently checks and verifies projects using a combination of satellite imagery and machine learning, has placed the Rio Preto project “on watch”, after noting significant and increasing deforestation within the project area.

Biofílica Ambipar, which runs the Rio Preto scheme, said it “works continuously to monitor, identify and report any illegal activity to the Brazilian public environmental authorities”.

The company says it relies on the Prodes system to monitor forest loss in the area. Created by the National Institute for Space Research in 1988, Prodes is also used by the Brazilian government for its official annual deforestation reports.

“According to the Prodes system, the deforestation rates in the region are lower than those informed by Global Forest Watch, which is not as accurate in classifying deforestation,” Biofílica Ambipar said.

Prodes is used to detect large-scale changes in primary forest, but it can miss smaller changes. The system uses satellite images that only detect clearcut logging of more than 6.25 hectares – an area equivalent to nearly nine football pitches – missing smaller-scale forest loss. The University of Maryland data, made available through Global Forest Watch, captures losses as small as 0.1 hectares, while also picking up forest degradation.

Still selling credits

Another Biofílica project was abruptly cancelled last year after part of it was legally deforested by the landowner. But carbon credits generated by the scheme are still on the market.

The Maísa project covered over 25,000 hectares of forest in the state of Pará controlled by a family-owned agroindustrial company, which runs eucalyptus, Brazil nuts and açaí plantations.

When the project began in 2012, the firm agreed with Biofílica to protect the trees and invest in better forest management practices in exchange for a share of the profits from the sale of carbon credits.

Since then, polluters including steel giant ArcelorMittal have bought hundreds of thousands of its credits.

But starting from last year the landowner began clearing increasingly larger areas of the forest in what Biofílica says was a breach of their agreement.

The project developer decided to stop the project, but it is still listed on the Verra register and its credits continue to be used for offsetting purposes. Over 38,000 credits have been retired since the project was stopped by Biofilica – more than 4,000 of them purchased by Uber to compensate for the emissions spewed by its fleet of cars in Central and South America.

Uber said that it “only invests in projects certified, traceable, and auditable by Verra, the United Nations, Gold Standard, and Climate Action Reserve [other verifying bodies for offsetting schemes] after a thorough investigation”.

Lure of agribusiness

Biofílica told Unearthed and Climate Home that the company had made it a policy to stop selling credits from the Maísa project as soon as it became aware of the legal logging. It added that “the project is currently in the process of being terminated and audited in line with Verra procedures.”

Asked what would happen to old credits in the project that are still available on the market through third-party sellers, Biofílica’s spokesperson said: “It is important to highlight that the credits that are still being sold by traders and brokers refer to credits verified in previous years, when there was still no legal deforestation scenario in the area; that is, they were audited and verified credits.”

However, when trees are cut down, the carbon stored in them is released back into the atmosphere, no matter if they were originally protected, negating any potential climate benefit. Experts say good projects need to ensure the carbon they sequester or avoid will remain out of the atmosphere for at least 100 years.

When asked what happens to credits in projects that are cancelled, a Verra spokesperson said projects are required to deposit a percentage of their credits into buffer pools which can be drawn on if a portion of the forest is lost.

Maísa’s buffer pool contains 131,600 credits which have currently been placed on hold, meaning Verra still needs to decide their fate. That is only 20% of the total credits put on the market for offsetting purposes, most of which have already been used.

Biofílica spokesperson suggested that what happened with the Maísa project was a sign that Redd+ projects can struggle to compete with the economic opportunities offered by agricultural production in the Amazon.

They said: “Maísa shows the reality of the Amazon region and illustrates the difficulties that all actors interested in conservation face in making carbon projects financially viable.”

The post Exposed: carbon offsets linked to high forest loss still on sale appeared first on Climate Home News.

The plan, announced in late August by the country’s Minister of Transportation, Renan Filho, was met with suspicion by environmentalists who are familiar with the fund’s guidelines.

During a press conference announcing new infrastructure investments, Filho said he plans to pitch the fund’s governing board a project to pave BR319, a road that cuts through the Amazon forest and connects two major cities in the north of Brazil — Manaus and Porto Velho. 

But environmentalists argue that this is not the kind of project that the fund is supposed to support. 

“The Amazon Fund is meant to keep the forest standing, to maintain its biodiversity, and to fight climate change. I don’t see its resources being used for paving. It would be completely incompatible with its guidelines,” says Sila Mesquita, president of the NGO Amazon Working Group and current representative of civil organisations in the Amazon Fund committee. 

One of the fund’s creators, forest scientist Tasso Azevedo also disagrees with the Ministry of Transportation’s plan. 

“I don’t think it makes any sense. This project does not fit into any of the fund’s planned support lines,” says Azevedo, currently coordinator at MapBiomas, an initiative to monitor land use in Brazil developed by a network of universities, NGOs, and technology companies. 

Created in 2008, the Amazon Fund has over $1.2 billion available for projects that prevent, monitor and combat deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. The fund gets its money mainly from its largest donors — Norway, Germany and state-owned oil company Petrobras.

Controversial comeback

In 2019, the Amazon Fund was virtually paralysed by former president Jair Bolsonaro, who dissolved the committee that sets guidelines on how the money should be spent. 

Because of this political move, the money was frozen for over three years, since new projects could not be analysed. Donor countries Norway and Germany also suspended new contributions during Bolsonaro’s term. 

Revived by president Lula on his first day in the office, new potential investors have lined up.

Last week, Denmark announced a donation of $22 million, joining the UK, USA, Switzerland, and the EU, all of which advertised new contributions since Lula reinstated the fund. 

The initiative had funded 102 projects amounting to over $360 million until it was paralysed by Bolsonaro. 

But none of the supported projects were related to road infrastructure, according to the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES), which manages the fund. 

“So far, the BNDES has not received any requests for financing a road infrastructure project using resources from the Amazon Fund,” BNDES told Climate Home News.

New guidelines

The bank also highlighted that any requests are processed “in accordance with the strategic vision, guidelines and focuses” outlined in the 2023-25 ​​Biennium, a new set of guidelines created by the Amazon Fund’s Guiding Committee. 

The new rules for how the money should be spent in the next two years were set by a committee formed by representatives of NGOs, environmental agencies and governmental institutions such as Brazil’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Environment. 

One of the members of this committee, Sila Mesquita, believes that the guidelines do not align with the project presented by the Ministry of Transportation.

The ministry, however, argues that the paving of BR319 would turn the road into the world’s “most sustainable highway” and would allow easier access for police patrols to monitor and prevent deforestation. 

“Our commitment, in addition to guaranteeing economic and social development by granting citizens the right to come and go, is also to ensure that the BR319 is a model in terms of environmental conservation,” the Ministry of Transportation told Climate Home News. 

Road through the rainforest

The BR319 is a federal highway that serves as the only link between two large states in the North of Brazil: Amazonas and Rondônia. 

Built during the 1970s, the road was delivered completely paved, but was closed a decade later due to lack of maintenance. Since then, only branches of the highway are paved and allow for regular traffic.

According to BR-319 Observatory, a collective of organisations that operate in the highway’s area, re-paving the road without conservation measures and proper consultation to indigenous communities can be prejudicial to the Amazon and encourage deforestation. 

The BR319 cuts through several conservation areas, including indigenous territories. Its indirect impact spans an ever larger perimeter

Several studies show that proximity to transportation networks is a major proximate driver of deforestation in the Amazon. Recent research has pointed out that 95% of the deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon happens within 5.5 km of a legal or illegal road. Considering only the official road network, most of the deforestation happens within 50 km of the nearest road. 

The complete paving of BR319, planned by the current Ministry of Transportation, still depends on several approvals from the Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (Ibama).

“For this road to be sustainable, like the government says, it needs to be beneficial for all those conservation parks and indigenous territories that it cuts through. We have to ask the people who live there what is sustainable for them. It’s not about being for or against the paving of a road: it’s about taking into consideration science, technology and the local communities as well,” says Sila Mesquita.

The post Brazilian government eyes money from Amazon Fund for controversial road appeared first on Climate Home News.

Ruto has been hailed abroad as one of Africa’s green champions. In Kenya, his plans to lift a ban on logging are causing controversy.

Ruto’s government argues that lifting the ban will boost the economy while only affecting a small minority of the East African nation’s forests.

Some environmentalists support him, saying that lifting the ban on chopping down commercial forests will help protect more natural indigenous forests, which suck in more carbon and shelter more wildlife.

Others say lifting the ban contradicts Ruto’s tree-planting campaign and will make a devastating drought even worse.

A mature exotic tree plantation at Eastern Mau Forest in Nakuru County. (Photo: James Wakibia/SOPA Images/Sipa USA)

Ruto’s reassessment

Kenya has over two million hectares of forests, covering an area bigger than Israel. Of this, about a twentieth is commercial forest, where companies plant and cut down trees for timber.

In 2018, as deforestation reduced river water levels and threatened the supply of drinking water and hydro powered electricity, then-deputy president Ruto imposed a 90-day ban on logging “to allow reassessment and rationalisation of the entire forest sector”. 

This ban kept being extended until July this year when Ruto, now president, lifted it. He told reporters in the timber town of Nakuru that it was “foolish” to have mature trees rotting in forests while locals suffer due to lack of income from timber.

“This is why we have decided to open up the forest and harvest timber so that we can create jobs for our youth,” he said.

Job creator

Defending the ban at a press conference in Nairobi, Ruto’s environment minister Soipan Tuya told Climate Home that deforestation in many parts of the country has nothing to do with legal logging.

Data from Global Forest Watch suggests that forestry is a minor cause of deforestation, compared to the much larger role played by shifting agriculture. 

Nevertheless, their analysis suggests that forestry has caused the loss of trees in hundreds of hectares a year over the last decade.

Tuya said the ban had resulted in large economic and job losses in the timber industry and caused Kenya to spend scarce foreign currency importing timber. 

“We have a demand for timber products in this country. We have a market for wood, which is doing extremely poorly. We are doing a lot of importation and that has implications to the economy,” Tuya said.

Cooking the books: cookstove offsets produce millions of fake emission cuts

The industry association for Kenya’s forest industry claims that the industry provides about 4% of the country’s GDP and provides jobs directly to up to 50,000 people. 

A natural resources management expert at the Nature Kenya environmental society, Rudolf Makhanu, told Climate Home he had “no problem” with lifting the ban for plantations.

He said these forests provide wood and cushion natural forests from degradation. In fact, he said that a “prolonged ban [on logging in plantation forests] can create pressure on indigenous forest, which plays a vital role in carbon absorption”.

Legal challenge

Makhanu’s view is not shared by other environmentalists. Kennedy Waweru is a lawyer from the Law Society of Kenya, which is challenging the ban’s lifting in court. LSK argues the government did not adequately consult the public.

At a press conference, Waweru told reporters that lifting the ban on logging is a damaging move which puts the short-term economic gain of a small minority ahead of the long-term well-being of the nation’s environment and future generations.

Geoffrey Wandeto, an ecologist and chair of the Chehe forest association, said that the lifting of the ban “could only worsen” the drought in northern Kenya, which has pushed around five million Kenyans into severe hunger.

Forests are critical to the water cycle, as trees draw up moisture from the soil and release it into the air. When forests are cut down, the soil dries out and rainfall declines, threatening the supply of food, water and hydro-powered electricity.

The Kenyan high court has suspended the lifting of the ban, pending a final verdict.

The post Kenyan president William Ruto courts logging controversy appeared first on Climate Home News.

That target was pushed by Brazil but met the opposition of the Bolivian government, according to Brazilian officials quoted in the Financial Times and the Guardian.

“We tried [to include some deforestation targets], but Bolivia explicitly asked for it to be deleted,” said one official, “Venezuela was perhaps [also] reluctant, but since Bolivia was so strongly [opposed], they did not need to speak against it”.

Bolivia and Venezuela were also the only two Amazon nations not to sign a pledge to protect forests at the Cop26 summit in Glasgow in 2021.

Between them, they hold roughly a seventh of the Amazon. But their governments are permissive when it comes to extractive activities in those areas—and in both countries deforestation is on the rise.

Agribusiness ambitions

Bolivia’s reported position at the Amazon summit is in line with its policies at home, which prioritise development and the export of agricultural commodities, among others.

Bolivia’s soy and beef exports are small compared to those of Brazil and Argentina, the regional agriculture giants. But they are growing, and the Bolivian government has set ambitious targets for the sector.

To meet them it has built infrastructure, kept taxes on agriculture low and subsidised fuel. It has also handed out forested public lands to internal migrants while authorising more forest clearing and decriminalising illegal deforestation.

Rapidly accelerating deforestation

According to Fundación Tierra, a Bolivian NGO, deforestation averaged roughly 300,000 hectares a year, an area the size of Hong Kong, between 2016 and 2021.

For three years running, Global Forest Watch has ranked Bolivia third in the world for loss of primary forest, ahead of Indonesia and behind only much bigger forest nations Brazil and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Yet there’s no sign of the government reducing its support for agribusiness. Declining gas exports have made agricultural exports all the more important to maintain the country’s international reserves.

EU puts Maroš Šefčovič in charge of climate policy

“It’s a sector that, even if it doesn’t generate much in the way of taxes, is very important for foreign exchange,” said Enrique Ormachea, an investigator at CEDLA, a Bolivian NGO.

Bolivia’s lack of foreign exchange has damaged its international credit rating, pushing up the price it pays to borrow money.

Recent policies aim to produce palm oil, boost beef exports to China and build biodiesel refineries that would use Bolivian produce—all of which would further expand the agricultural frontier.

Venezuela’s gold rush

On the other side of the Amazon, Luis Betancourt is the head of Venezuelan NGO Grupo de Investigaciones sobre la Amazonía.

He told Climate Home: “In the Venezuelan Amazon we don’t really have deforestation for ranching or large-scale agriculture, what we have is illegal mining.”

According to the IMF, between 2013 and 2021 Venezuela’s economy shrank by more than four-fifths. Millions left the country in search of work. Many others went into small-scale gold mining.

An illegal gold mine in the south of Venezuela, pictured in 2012 (Reuters/Jorge Silva)

The government looked to mining to replace the revenues lost with the collapse of the oil industry. In 2016, President Nicolás Maduro decreed the creation of the Orinoco Mining Arc, taking an area that holds roughly a tenth of the nation’s landmass and five national parks and opening it up for mining concessions.

RAISG, a network of NGOs, has detected almost 2,000 mining sites in the Venezuelan Amazon, where it is estimated some 189,000 people work.

Mines are controlled by armed groups, including guerrilla groups and mining gangs known as sindicatos. Investigations by Insight Crime indicate many are linked to organised crime and backed by elements of the Venezuelan state, who take a cut of the profits.

Lack of interest

One study put the loss of forest in the Venezuelan Amazon at 140,000 hectares between 2016 and 2020, accounting for 1.6% of the total loss across the Amazon in that period.

Asked why Venezuela might have resisted a pledge to eradicate deforestation by 2030, Professor María Eugenia Grillet, an ecologist at the Universidad Central de Venezuela, said it was perhaps because that would imply committing itself to something it cannot achieve in the short or even medium-term.

“Because ultimately the government doesn’t seem interested in the conservation of our Amazonian forests,” she said. “This illegal gold mining seems to be promoted by a certain part of the state, by corruption, by unregulated illicit activities—and by the political, economic and social crisis of the country.”

The post Soy, beef and gold gangsters: Why Bolivia and Venezuela won’t protect the Amazon appeared first on Climate Home News.

It is easy to see why. For the first time in 14 years, leaders from eight Amazonian nations came together in the Brazilian city of Bèlem to sketch out a plan to tackle deforestation.

The biggest success is that the meeting happened at all. It would have been an unfathomable proposition less than a year ago under the then-presidency of Jair Bolsonaro, who was overseeing a skyrocketing increase in tree-chopping in the Amazon rainforest.

When it comes to the summit’s outcome things get less rosy. The countries agreed to a long list of policies and areas of possible cooperation. But, as environmental groups put it, the Bèlem Declaration looks like “a compilation of good intentions with little in the way of measurable goals and timeframes”.

There are two notable absentees in the final document: a pledge to end deforestation by 2030 and any mention of halting fossil fuel expansion in the Amazon.

The former met the insurmountable opposition of the Bolivian government, according to Brazilian officials quoted in the FT and the Guardian. The latter, pushed by Colombia’s Gustavo Petro, always looked doomed given Brazil is still looking into plans to develop a huge offshore oil field near the mouth of the Amazon River.

The Amazon nations did, however, manage to unite around a thinly-veiled attack on new EU deforestation rules affecting imported commodities

European leaders see this as a key lever in the fight to save rainforests. But the eight countries – and many other forest nations worldwide – slam the environmental rules as “protectionist” trade barriers.

This fight will continue at the negotiations over the EU-Mercosur free trade deal.

This week’s news:

• Indonesia falls short on peatland restoration, risking destructive fire season
• Amazon nations decry EU deforestation rules in thinly-veiled joint condemnation
• Amazon nations fail to agree on deforestation goal at summit
• Metals bosses enjoy front row seat at UN deep-sea mining negotiations
• Mainstream economists accused of playing down climate threat
• Amazon nations split on oil and deforestation, ahead of summit

Climate-unfriendly economics

Mainstream economists have a dangerous habit of playing down climate change.

At least that’s according to two recent reports that reached the same conclusion: economic models ignore tipping points, floods, droughts and indoor work. Glaring omissions that end up hugely underplaying the economic damage of global warming.

This is not just an academic exercise. The models are relied upon by investors, politicians, central bank governors and influential bodies like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

If economists get it wrong, decisions made on the basis of their work will prove costly.

The post Dis-united States of the Amazon – Climate Weekly appeared first on Climate Home News.

A law adopted by European governments in June requires companies to prove a series of products, including cattle, soya and palm oil, were not grown on land affected by tree loss.

The EU says the rules are a key building block in the fight against climate change and biodiversity loss. But some of the world’s biggest commodity producers have been voicing increasing discontent calling the measures “protectionist” and “discriminatory”.

The latest sign of opposition comes in the Belém Declaration signed on Tuesday by eight South American countries following a major rainforest summit in Brazil. The final document includes a rejection to trade measures such as the EU’s rules.

In the Brazilian city of Belém, Presidents and top officials from Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia and Peru attended the Amazon Summit, while Ecuador, Guyana, Suriname and Venezuela sent other top officials.

Amazon nations fail to agree on deforestation goal at summit

Environmental ‘trade barriers’

The countries failed to agree on a common goal for ending deforestation but issued unified policies and measures to bolster regional cooperation.

The final document does not single out the European law specifically, but it condemns “the proliferation of unilateral trade measures based on environmental requirements and norms which constitute trade barriers”.

The signatories go on to claim that such measures “primarily affect smallholder farmers in developing countries, the pursuit of sustainable development, the promotion of Amazon products and the efforts to eradicate poverty and fight hunger”.

Mainstream economists accused of playing down climate threat

Marcio Astrini from the Observatório do Clima called the inclusion of the paragraph in the joint declaration “a disgrace”. He told Climate Home News that if countries like Brazil and Colombia are serious about ending deforestation, they should have vetoed this statement.

“What’s wrong with a commercial partner saying they don’t want to buy products linked to deforestation?”, Astrini added. “Environmental and climate issues are already part of business and market standards around the world, this is a new reality, and it is better to adapt to it.”

Brazilian backlash

The attack on trade measures in the declaration follows a week of heated rhetoric by top government officials in the region.

Brazil’s agriculture minister Carlos Favaro slammed the European deforestation law, calling it “an affront” to global trade regulations. He added Brazil would boost trade relations with other partners if the EU continues not to recognize Brazil’s efforts to protect the environment.

Indonesia falls short on peatland restoration, risking destructive fire season

Deforestation accelerated sharply under the far-right then-president Jair Bolsonaro, but rates have been coming down since the new administration led by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took power at the start of the year.

Brazil is the single biggest exporter of agricultural products to the EU, shipping almost $12 billion worth of soya, corn and beef to the bloc in 2022. The commodities have been a historical driver of tree loss across the Amazon region, including in Brazil. The government says only 2% of Brazilian farmers commit environmental crimes.

Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva waits for the official family photo with leaders of countries attending the Amazon Summit at the Hangar Convention Centre in Belem, Para State, Brazil. (Photo: Reuters)

Astrini claims for the overwhelming majority of producers the new rules will not be a problem, making the criticism of the European regulations “meaningless” in Brazil.

Other major commodities-producing nations like Indonesia and Malaysia have previously criticised the regulations.

‘Critical step’

Companies have until December 2024 to adjust to the new legislation, which requires them to trace the products they are selling back to the plot of land where they were produced.

André Vasconcelos from the supply-chain transparency group Trase says the EU law is a “critical step” in making sure consumer markets play a role in driving down deforestation. But he added that for the new regulations to be “effective and equitable”, the EU needs to cooperate with producer countries.

Metals bosses enjoy front row seat at UN deep-sea mining negotiations

“Such collaboration needs to include the provision of financial support to boost enforcement of environmental regulations as well as the provision of incentives for farmers, particularly smallholder farmers, not to deforest”, he told Climate Home News.

The EU says it is stepping up its engagement with producing countries to ensure an inclusive transition to deforestation-free and legal supply chains.

Mercosur stumbling block

The issue is likely to come back to the fore at upcoming talks over a long-awaited free trade agreement between the EU and South America’s Mercosur bloc.

Paraguay’s President-elect Santiago Pena told Reuters this week that the EU’s current environmental demands in trade talks are “unacceptable”. He said that the European bloc’s proposals would hinder major soy exporter Paraguay’s economic development.

Brazil is also pushing the EU for better trading terms in return for offering environmental guarantees over the protection of the Amazon rainforest. Mercosur officials are working on a counter-proposal before meeting with EU negotiators. The two sides hope to reach an agreement before the end of the year.

The post Amazon nations decry EU deforestation rules in thinly-veiled joint condemnation appeared first on Climate Home News.

Eight years after, the Indonesian government claims to have made huge progress, with as much as 3.66 million hectares of peatland declared “restored” in areas managed by plantation companies. But these claims are not supported by data the government has made public, an analysis by The Gecko Project has found. 

The government’s statements appear to hinge on a narrow definition of “restoration” that deems peatlands restored when groundwater levels have been raised to 40 centimetres below the surface.  

The analysis of government data indicates that even by this measure, the areas “restored” have never reached the figures cited in official documentation and may in fact be far lower. Many of these peats sit on land licensed to timber companies. 

​​The data also shows that the area of peatland that meets this 40cm threshold also fluctuates wildly as water levels rise and fall, sometimes dropping as low as half a million hectares – a fraction of the area claimed as “restored” by the government.

​​The Indonesian Ministry of Environment and Forestry, known as KLHK, did not respond to written questions, or to extensive attempts to seek comment on our findings.​ 

Environmental researchers who spoke to The Gecko Project viewed the implementation of a system to monitor peatland restoration as a positive step. But some also expressed scepticism about the government’s claims of success and how it was arriving at its figures. 

In the meantime, with Indonesia heading into what meteorologists predict could be an extreme dry season this year, the findings suggest that large areas of peatland could be far more vulnerable to burning than the government has acknowledged.  

The coming months, said David Taylor, a professor and peatland expert at the National University of Singapore, would serve as “a good test” of the government’s claims. 

An excavator operates in peatland covered by haze from fires in a concession belonging to PT Kaswari Unggul (KU) in Sumatra, Indonesia. (Photo: Greenpeace)

The repair job starts 

Despite covering only around three percent of the planet’s land surface, peatlands store around a third of all the world’s soil carbon.  

In Indonesia, where they cover more than 20 million hectares, peatlands have long been prone to fire during the dry season, especially during El Niño events. But the risks have ​been worsened by the draining of peatlands ​to allow cultivation of oil palm and timber plantations. 

The government set out to undo some of that damage by issuing a series of decrees and regulations, beginning in 2016, which aimed to rewet drained peatlands and replant vegetation.  

Gas lock-in: Debt-laden Ghana gambles on LNG imports

According to these guidelines, success would be assessed through multiple metrics, including plant growth and keeping the groundwater level at no lower than 40cm below the surface. Some research has suggested that higher water levels offer better protection against fires. 

A specially-established government body, now named the Peatland and Mangrove Restoration Agency, or BRGM, was given authority for overseeing peat restoration in land controlled by communities or the government. 

However, several million hectares of peatland fall within land already licensed to plantation companies. ​KLHK​ ordered companies to restore peatlands within their concessions and report back their progress.  

Mission accomplished? 

According to KLHK reports, companies have made progress in restoring peatlands. The KLHK website, for example, states that 3.4 million hectares of peatland within concession areas were “restored” between 2015 and 2019. 

A more recent KLHK report from 2022 states that “as of December 2021 (peatland restoration) had reached 3.66 million hectares.” 

But the KLHK’s methods for assessing which peatlands are restored can be narrow, experts say, as they appear to focus only on rewetting lands and not on other metrics. 

While companies are required to raise peat groundwater levels to at least 40cm belowground, other phases of restoration work, such as replanting native vegetation, appear to have been sidelined, leaving “rewetting” to be used as a proxy for restoration.  

In a 2022 report, the ministry registered fewer than 6,000 hectares as having “vegetation rehabilitation”. 

“Green” finance bankrolls forest destruction in Indonesia

A data analysis by The Gecko Project also shows that, even under the more generous approach of counting only rewetted peatlands as restored, the numbers still fall short of what the government says has been restored. 

Still, KLHK has claimed that by 2019, rewetting work alone had already reduced carbon dioxide emissions by more than 190 million tons – equivalent to the annual national emissions of the United Arab Emirates. KLHK did not respond to questions about the data supporting these calculations. 

Restoration falls short? 

KLHK has not made public a list of areas deemed to be restored and did not respond to requests for this information. However, it has published the areas that have been rewetted to various levels. 

Using this data, The Gecko Project identified peatlands within concession areas and compared their water levels to the 3.66 million hectares that KLHK claims have been restored.  

At a more detailed glance, the data shows big fluctuations in the “rewetted” area, suggesting that water levels are not being maintained on a stable basis.  

For example, at the beginning of 2019, during a wet season that saw torrential floods in many parts of the country, KLHK registered that around 3.5 million hectares of peatland inside concession areas had groundwater levels at 40cm belowground or higher.  

But in the middle of the 2022 dry season, the area rewetted was down to around just half a million hectares. 

Fire risk 

The data analysis also identified multiple “dry” concession areas in which water levels fell consistently below 40cm in the past year, highlighting a possibly heightened fire risk as this year’s El Niño event progresses.  

As an example, PT Rimba Hutani Mas, a pulpwood plantation company and supplier of the major paper and pulp firm Asia Pulp & Paper (APP), manages nearly 70,000 hectares in South Sumatra province, the majority of which is on peatlands according to government maps.  

Large sections of PT Rimba Hutani Mas’s peatland had water levels below the 40cm threshold​ over the last year​, KLHK data shows. According to ​the ​ministry, concession holders that have groundwater at this level “should carry out field checks immediately and improve or repair water management infrastructure in the field.” 

In 2015, army officers and firefighters try to extinguish fires in peatland areas outside the city of Palangka Raya in Borneo’s Central Kalimantan province. Photo: (Aulia Erlangga/CIFOR)

But the company was subject to legal action by Singapore’s National Environment Agency after evidence emerged that fires in its concession had contributed substantially to the haze of 2015. APP argued at the time that almost all the fires in its concession areas had been started outside those areas. 

APP did not respond to specific questions about water levels in this supplier’s concession area. The company said it has been submitting “all the required data” to KLHK and pointed to its 2022 Sustainability Report. 

Job not done 

Peat researchers agree that fluctuations in water level are to be expected in peatlands, whether or not land is being managed. This complicates the use of groundwater level as a standalone measure of restoration success.  

Water levels are highly dependent on external climate conditions, noted Muh Taufik, a tropical peatland researcher at IPB University. In the wet season, the water table could be at ground level or even above ground, while in the dry season it can fall to a metre or more below the surface, he said. 

The topography of the land itself can influence the water table, too – valleys are more likely than slopes to remain wet. “It’s very difficult to maintain the water table around 40cm,” Taufik said. 

Such variability reinforces some researchers’ concerns about judging restoration success on the basis of water level data alone. 

As Guyana shows, carbon offsets will not save the Amazon rainforest

While getting water back into dried-out peatlands is important, “it’s definitely not ‘job done’” once the water table reaches 40cm, said Dominick Spracklen, a professor of biosphere-atmosphere interactions at the University of Leeds. Rather, he said, “it is a good proxy for things moving in the right direction.” 

David Taylor, from the University of Singapore, suggested that rewetting should be seen as a first step.  

While having a monitoring system for peat rewetting is a positive step, he said, it’s important to take a more holistic approach to peat restoration that acknowledges the time and multiple steps involved – particularly reintroducing plants and allowing natural vegetation to grow in the absence of peat-damaging plantation activities. 

Uncertain figures 

Gusti, the professor at Tanjungpura University said it’s “very complicated” to determine whether the ministry’s peatland restoration claims have been achieved or not.  

Separate KLHK documents appear to acknowledge much lower success rates than claimed by officials. A 2020 report, for example, noted that, out of 280 concession areas, just 60 were found to have “actually improved their performance of peatland ecosystems management.” 

Fieldwork published in 2021 by the nonprofit Pantau Gambut concluded that “most companies” had failed to implement plans to restore peat. 

The implications of these failings, and the fluctuations in water levels, may become apparent in the coming months, as dry weather continues to intensify in Indonesia in the first El Niño year since 2019.1 By mid-June, KLHK reported that fires in 2023 had already affected more than 28,000 hectares of forest and other land. 

“Big El Niños over the last thirty years or so have been associated with drought here in southeast Asia [and with] peatland fires,” said Taylor.  

Fires can burn even on pristine peatlands, he said, but if Indonesia’s restoration work has been successful, it should help limit some of the damage. “I think it’s going to be a test of claims that have been made that these peatlands have been restored.” 

This story was published in partnership with The Gecko Project.

The post Indonesia falls short on peatland restoration, risking destructive fire season appeared first on Climate Home News.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who has staked his international reputation on improving Brazil’s environmental standing, had been pushing for the region to unite behind a common policy of ending deforestation by 2030 – one he has already adopted.

Instead, the joint declaration issued on Tuesday in the Brazilian city of Belem created an alliance for combating forest destruction, with countries left to pursue their own individual deforestation goals.

The document also leaves out any mentions to halting fossil fuel contracts in the Amazon rainforest, a proposal that was championed by the Colombian President Gustavo Petro but ultimately failed to make it into the final text.

The Brazilian coalition of climate NGOs, Climate Observatory, said the declaration fell short of expectations, adding the agreement “fails the rainforest and the planet”.

Pressure grows on governments and banks to stop supporting Amazon oil and gas

Slow action

The failure of the eight Amazon countries to agree on a pact to protect their own forests points to the larger, global difficulties at forging an agreement to combat climate change. Many scientists say policymakers are acting too slowly to head off catastrophic global warming.

Lula and other national leaders left Tuesday’s meeting without commenting on the declaration. Presidents from Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia and Peru attended the summit, while Ecuador, Guyana, Suriname and Venezuela sent other top officials.

Brazil’s Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira said in a press briefing that the issue of deforestation “in no way whatsoever will divide the region” and cited “an understanding about deforestation” in the declaration, without elaborating.

As Guyana shows, carbon offsets will not save the Amazon rainforest

This week’s summit brought together the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO) for the first time in 14 years, with plans to reach a broad agreement on issues from fighting deforestation to financing sustainable development.

Márcio Astrini, executive secretary of the Brazilian NGO coalition Climate Observatory, said the summit’s declaration is a “first step” but added it still lacks “concrete responses to the situation we’re dealing with”.

“The planet is melting, we are breaking temperature records every day. It is not possible that, in a scenario like this, eight Amazonian countries cannot put in a statement, in bold letters, that deforestation needs to be zero and that exploring for oil in the middle of the forest is not a good idea,” said Astrini.

Oil in the Amazon?

Tensions emerged in the lead up to the summit around diverging positions on deforestation and oil development.

Fellow Amazon countries also rebuffed Colombia’s leftist President Gustavo Petro’s ongoing campaign to end new oil development in the Amazon. In his speech on Tuesday, Petro likened the left’s desire to keep drilling for oil to the right-wing denial of climate science.

He said the idea of making a gradual “energy transition” away from fossil fuels was a way to delay the work needed to stop climate change.

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Civil society organisations accused the Brazilian government of opposing a mention to fossil fuels in the final text, adding the country wanted to “bury” any mentions of a fossil fuel phase out in the region.

Brazil is weighing whether to develop a potentially huge offshore oil find near the mouth of the Amazon River and the country’s northern coast, which is dominated by rainforest.

“What we are discussing in Brazil today is of an extensive and large area – in my vision perhaps the last frontier of oil and gas before … the energy transition,” Brazil’s Energy Minister Alexandre Silveira told reporters after Petro’s speech.

Silveira said they should conduct research into what oil is there in order to make a decision on the issue.

Illegal mining

Beyond deforestation, the summit also did not fix a deadline on ending illegal gold mining, although leaders agreed to cooperate on the issue and to better combat cross-border environmental crime.

The final joint statement, called the Belem Declaration, strongly asserted indigenous rights and protections, while also agreeing to cooperate on water management, health, common negotiating positions at climate summits, and sustainable development.

As Reuters previously reported, the declaration additionally established a science body to meet annually and produce authoritative reports on science related to the Amazon rainforest, akin to the United Nations’ International Panel on Climate Change.

The post Amazon nations fail to agree on deforestation goal at summit appeared first on Climate Home News.

Medco had initially planted a vast timber plantation to produce wood chips for exports. Then, in 2017, Indonesia injected Medco with $4.5 million to build a biomass plant in the area and committed the state-owned electricity company to buy the energy it generated. In 2021, the government gave the plant an extra $9 million. 

The company said it needs to almost double the size of its plantation to meet the demands of the power plant, and that it would continue to use wood harvested from the forest as it is cleared. 

Ultimately, the most affected were local villagers depending on the forest. The project has made it harder for Marind people, hunter-gatherers indigenous people to the lowlands of Papua, to find food to eat. 

This story is the result of a new Climate Home News investigation in collaboration with The Gecko Project and Project Multatuli, both publications based in Indonesia. 

This week’s news:

• “Green” finance bankrolls forest destruction in Indonesia
• FSC’s rehab scheme for forest destroyers under fire after fresh allegations
• Amazon gateway city Belém will host Cop30 climate talks
• Comment: Climate movement must switch on to UAE threat

Our reporter Joe Lo is in Paris covering key UN plastics treaty negotiations. Check out our coverage:

• Row over veto powers holds up Paris plastic treaty talks
• Comment: How a local victory against petrochemicals can spur global action on plastics

Forest protection has been on our radar recently, as allegations surged that forest logging companies were using a sustainability certification scheme called the FSC to brand themselves as sustainable while continuing to clear forests. 

At its assembly last year, the Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC) agreed to give their stamp of approval to companies that have cut down trees between 1994 and 2020 if they restore part of the forests and compensate communities.  

These companies include two Indonesian pulp and paper giants, Asia Pacific Resources International Limited (April) and Asia Pulp and Paper (APP), which had cleared vast areas of the tropical rainforest for decades. 

But environmental groups accused both companies of sourcing wood from suppliers which continue to cut down intact forests. One of the suppliers, they found, cut down an area equivalent to 20,000 football pitches. 

FSC told Climate Home News it “will not engage with any organisation that continues to be part of destructive activities”. “The FSC should prepare itself not to be fooled,” one campaigner responded. 

The post “Green” funds destroy Indonesia’s forests – Climate Weekly appeared first on Climate Home News.

At its assembly last year, the Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC) agreed to give their stamp of approval to companies that have cut down trees between 1994 and 2020 if they restore part of the forests and compensate communities. The move was backed by logging companies and green campaigners.

The programme will officially start in July, but preparatory work has already begun with companies interested in regaining the valuable certification, which opens loggers up to more customers. These companies include two Indonesian pulp and paper giants which had cleared vast areas of the tropical rainforest for decades.

Asia Pacific Resources International Limited (April) and Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) now say they have turned a new leaf and have now eliminated deforestation in their supply chains.

But environmental groups doubt their commitment and accuse both companies of sourcing wood from suppliers which continue to cut down intact forests. April and APP refute the accusations.

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Any evidence of deforestation since 2020 should immediately disqualify the companies from obtaining certification.

Grant Rosoman, a campaigner at Greenpeace and former FSC board member, says the certification body needs to first look at evidence on the ground before allowing companies to proceed with the scheme.

“If the FSC finds any companies associated with them have continued deforestation over the last two or three years that should be an immediate stop to the process”, he added. “The big danger is that this could become a marketing operation”.

FSC told Climate Home News it “will not engage with any organisation that continues to be part of destructive activities”.

Coveted green symbol

From books to toilet paper, millions of goods across the world boast the FSC’s tick-tree symbol. For the consumer its presence should guarantee the product originates from sustainable and ethical sources.

For companies seeking the certification body’s recognition the symbol is a business opportunity. It opens up wider access to markets as many governments and major retailers, especially in Western countries, require the use of FSC-certified products.

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As the rule-setter and enforcer, the FSC plays the crucial role of upholding the integrity of the system. At its general assembly last year its members voted overwhelmingly in favour of a historical change: it moved from 1994 to 2020 the cut-off date by which companies need to have stopped clearing forests in order to get a certification.

Crucially, however, this would only apply if companies restored the same amount of forests that had been cut in their concessions during the period, and provided remedy for the social harm done in the process.

Problem companies engaged

The FSC said this change would “provide a route by which millions of hectares of forests can be restored and then become FSC certified and managed in a responsible manner”.

In March the FSC announced that that it was “engaged in a dialogue” with April and APP to plan their involvement in the remedy process.

UN advises against offsets for carbon removal technologies

Part of large South-east Asian conglomerates selling products in hundreds of countries, both APP and April used to hold FSC certifications. But they lost them, respectively in 2007 and 2013, when the FSC concluded they had been destroying pristine rainforests.

Since then, both companies have vowed to reform themselves. April committed in 2015 to eliminating deforestation from its supply chain and to protecting forests and peatlands. APP similarly pledged to halt all natural forest clearance.

Deforestation allegations

But separate investigations from campaigners and media have repeatedly accused the two companies of breaking their promises.

In the latest instance, last week a coalition of environmental groups accused April of receiving “significant volumes of wood” from two suppliers with evidence of deforestation. In particular, the report points the finger at Adindo Hutani Lestari, an April supplier located in north-eastern Borneo.

The investigation detected over 10,500 hectares of natural forest loss in its concession area since 2016. That’s roughly the equivalent of 20,000 football pitches. In the last month alone, over a hundred hectares of trees have been cut down in the area, according to Nusantara Atlas, which tracks deforestation using satellite images.

Grant Rosoman says this evidence “throws into question” April’s ability to be part of the FSC remedy scheme. “It’s very easy to make a commitment but delivering it on the ground is another story,” he says. “The FSC should not waste its time and do a preliminary screening to see if there is even a basis for moving forward”.

‘Baseless claims’

In a statement published on its website, April said: “claims made in the report related to April were baseless”. The company added that, based on its own analysis, no deforestation occurred in areas controlled by its supplier Adindo Hutani Lestari.

APP has faced similar accusations of backsliding on its commitments. Last year a report by a group of campaigners claimed two timber suppliers controlled by APP destroyed natural habitats in a protected reserve to grow acacia trees for pulpwood.

Over 220 hectares of forest have been cleared over the last 12 months in the concession areas of those two companies, according to Nusantara Atlas.

APP did not reply to our request for comment. But, in a statement published last year in response to the report, it said deforestation does not take place on any of its supplier concessions. It also said no natural forests were turned into pulpwood cultivations in the areas controlled by the two suppliers.

Loophole risks

FSC told Climate Home News evidence of the progress in implementing remedy work “must be present and verified” before companies can apply for a new certification.

It also said it would “not engage with any organisation that continues to be part of destructive activities, considered as serious violations, within its corporate group”.

Environmentalists worry the narrow focus only on operations directly controlled by companies seeking association could be exploited as a loophole.

That’s because – they claim – companies like April and APP hide their direct links to third-party suppliers through complicated corporate structures stretching into secretive offshore countries.

Timer Manurung from the Indonesian environmental group Auriga says the FSC must take into consideration any deforestation in the groups’ supply chains or this could be an escape route.  “The FSC should prepare itself not to be fooled”, she added.

A previous version of the story included maps from deforested areas, but these were removed due to deforestation happening before the images were taken.

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In a joint statement, the countries said they “intend to engage collaboratively in support of eliminating global illegal logging and deforestation through effectively enforcing their respective laws on banning illegal imports and exports”.

Brazilian President Lula da Silva met with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping during a visit to China, in a bid to strengthen ties. China is Brazil’s largest trading partner and a major importer of commodities such as soy and crude petroleum.

Both countries added they will cooperate with satellite information, “which will enable enhanced monitoring”. China and Brazil share the CBERS satellite program, which made its first launch back in 2001.

Brazil bids to bring Cop30 climate talks to Amazon’s Belem

Cyntia Feitosa, international relations advisor at the Brazilian think tank Instituto Clima e Sociedade, said the joint statement was “a very good signal”, but warned there’s still questions about how it would be put into practice.

“It would be very good to see some joint traceability strategy, for example, to avoid the export of any product that has deforestation in its supply chain,” Feitosa said.

A 2019 report by the Brazilian NGO Amazon Watch showed that companies charged with environmental crimes in the Amazon were still able to export their products to the international market, in particular to Brazil’s three main trading partners — China, the EU and the US.

Climate leadership

With the arrival of Lula da Silva to Brazil’s presidency, the country resumed its efforts to influence global climate action. Da Silva also retook a closer relation with China, which at times was tense under the last government of Jair Bolsonaro.

Both countries now agreed to establish a Subcommittee on Environment and Climate Change and support Brazil’s bid for Cop30. Back in January, Da Silva expressed his desire to host the UN climate talks in Belem, the second-biggest city in the Amazon region.

Lula revives $1 billion Amazon Fund and environmental protections

“China welcomes the Brazilian candidacy to host COP30, as the 2025 summit will be key to the very future of the global response to climate change,” the statement said.

Feitosa welcomed the countries’ collaboration with climate action at the center. “I hope this is reflected in a collaborative posture in the negotiations and the search for effective solutions at a crucial moment for the next steps in the implementation of the Paris Agreement,” she said.

Li Shuo, policy advisor for Greenpeace East Asia, said Brazil and China hold a big sway among develpoping countries, putting them in a unique position to lead initiatives coming from the Global South.

“A Brazil that is back to international scene and a China that seeks to enhance developing country solidarity should not just imply a fortress position, but rather a stance that champions global south concerns while at the same time advances their own action,” Shuo said.

“What we need is a more forward looking position from them that says developed countries need to act and so do we. Let’s hope the joint statement is a starting point to get us there,” he added.

This story was updated to include comments from Li Shuo.

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On Friday, Lula visited Washington DC to meet with Biden at the White House. The US government’s summary of the meeting says “the United States announced its intent to work with [the US] Congress to provide funds for programs to protect and conserve the Brazilian Amazon, including initial support for the Amazon Fund, and to leverage investments in this critical region”.

The Amazon Fund is a pot of money administered by the Brazilian Development Bank which is spent on forest protection projects like small-scale farming and management of forests by indigenous people.

The $1.2 billion fund was suspended under Bolsonaro but revived on Lula’s first day in office. It is funded by Norway and Germany and the UK is considering a donation too. The US has never financially backed it before.

“Significant change”

When running to become president in 2020, Biden promised that if elected he would mobilise “the hemisphere and the world” to provide $20bn in public and private money to protect the world’s biggest rainforest.

When he came to power, his administration tried unsuccesfully to negotiate with far-right Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, who oversaw a spike in rainforest destruction and was hostile to what he claimed was foreign interference in Brazil’s affairs.

In January 2023, left-wing president Lula took power on a promise to end deforestation by giving more power to the environmental protection agencies gutted by Bolsonaro.

Missed deadline raises risk of delays to loss and damage fund

Natalie Unterstell, president of Brazilian think-tank Talanoa Institute, told Climate Home that a US donation to the Amazon Fund would be “a significant change in the way the US deals with climate finance for Brazil as it shifts the resources to Brazilian governance instead of acting through a cooperation agency.”

“It’s quite positive. This is an important gesture and a first step from the perspective of rebuilding the bilateral relationship between the countries. But we will need a billion-dollar strategy, not a million-dollar one, to achieve zero deforestation in this decade,” she added.

Limited budget

But the US has a poor record of delivering public climate finance, consistently giving less than much smaller European economies. The president has to negotiate with Congress over how to spend their budget, gaining the support of 60 of the 100 US Senators and a majority in the House of Representatives.

For the September 2022 to October 2023 fiscal year, Biden asked Congress for $11.4 billion for international climate finance but received only $1bn.

Biden was criticised for not fighting hard enough against Republicans in Congress for that finance. Diana Movius, forest lead at Climate Advisers, told a press briefing last week: “In those last minute budget negotiations with high level folks from both parties and from the administration that finance was likely not prioritised”.

UN budget cuts hindered response to Pakistan’s extreme floods

Since then, Biden’s Democrats have lost control of one part of Congress – the House of Representatives – while having just a slim majority in the Senate.

Joe Thwaites, an international climate finance advocate at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), said this will make it harder for Biden to get more climate finance when he makes his next budget request in the coming months.

In the October 2022 to September 2023 fiscal year, the Biden administration could give money to the Amazon Fund by drawing upon money earmarked for international development but, Meyer said, there was a lot of competition for this “fairly limited pool of funds”.

Renewed talks

E3G analyst Alden Meyer said that environmentalists would need to “work to block likely efforts to cut international climate funding”.

But both Meyer and Thwaites said that Republicans have tended to support tree-planting and tropical forest conservation more than other climate measures.

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Biden and Lula agreed to re-instate a joint working group on climate change which was set up in 2015 before being disbanded at the end of the year.

The working group will discuss cooperation on topics which include fighting deforestation, supporting clean energy deployment, adapting to climate change, making farming more climate-friendly and enhancing the bioeconomy.

Izabella Teixera was involved in the working group as Brazil’s environment minister between 2010 and 2016. She told Climate Home it had worked well, as then presidents Barack Obama and Dilma Rousseff were involved and influenced the talks at the highest level.

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Wedged between Brazil and Suriname, the overseas department has little in common with mainland France bar the name. The Amazon rainforest covers more than 90% of the territory.

However, French Guiana is critical to Europe’s soft power. It is home to the continent’s spaceport where the European Space Agency launches its satellites.

Now, the French government is seeking exemptions from proposed EU rules that would restrict the use of bioenergy on the territory. The loophole would allow French Guiana to receive public financing to produce biofuels “especially for the space sector”.

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Local lawmakers argue the dispensation is necessary to protect French Guiana’s forestry sector and accelerate its energy transition. But campaigners have warned the exemption risks setting an incentive for increased logging in Europe’s corner of the Amazon forest.

“Thousands of hectares of Amazon forest could be cleared to be replaced with monocultures designed to produce energy… with the help of public financing,” Marine Calmet, a lawyer specialised in environmental law at NGOs Maiouri Nature Guyane and Wild Legal, told Climate Home News

Rules for biofuels

The EU considers burning wood a renewable energy and subsidises its production. Bioenergy accounts for almost 60% of the EU’s renewable energy mix. But a mounting body of evidence is showing that burning wood emits more carbon dioxide than coal per unit of energy – worsening climate change.

Regrown trees may eventually remove the emitted carbon from the atmosphere but the process could take decades to a century – time which scientists say the world doesn’t have to prevent the worst impacts of global heating. To start addressing the issue, the EU is negotiating stricter sustainability criteria for producing and using bioenergy.

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Draft legislation adopted by the EU parliament proposed to exclude “primary woody biomass” – untransformed wood such as whole trees, logs and stumps – from receiving renewable energy subsidies, with limited exceptions. It also caps the amount that can count as renewable energy to current use.

Biomass from agricultural crops can’t be considered renewable if they are grown on land of great biodiversity value or replacing primary and ancient forests.

But French lawmakers introduced an exemption for “an outermost region where forests cover at least 90% of the territory”. It would allow biomass fuels and biofuels “especially used in the space sector” and regardless of their origin to receive public financing if they incentivise the transition away from fossil fuels.

Analysts told Climate Home French Guiana is the only known EU region where this could apply.

The Guiana Space Center is surrounded by 90% of forest covered territory in the Amazon. (Photo: CNES/ESA/Arianespace/Optique Video CSG/P Baudon)

Biofuels in the rainforest

The loophole would allow France to count woody bioenergy production in French Guiana towards its own renewable energy target – despite a cap in the rest of the continent. In 2020, France was the only EU member state to fail to achieve its renewable energy target.

Authorities in French Guiana argue the EU’s proposed rules threatened the territory’s goal to move away from fossil fuels, including at the spaceport, which consumes 18% of the electricity produced locally.

Two biomass plants, totalling 9MW, are being built to produce electricity and cooling for operations at the space station. By 2030, French Guiana wants 25% of its electricity mix to come from woody biomass.

Thibault Lechat-Vega, a local official responsible for European affairs, told Climate Home that halting subsidies to the sector would require the territory to import wood pellets from Canada and China “at a catastrophic carbon cost”.

EU plans restrictions on climate-wrecking fishing method

“There is clearly no question of cutting the forest to produce biofuels but to support research to green the European space launcher,” he said, adding that the logging sector in French Guiana followed some of the world’s strictest sustainability criteria.

Waste from forest clearance to give way to agriculture and to build homes and infrastructure would be used, he explained.

But Calmet said these assurances were insufficient. “Elected officials are providing no guarantees about the origins of the biomass. On the contrary, they want to contravene all legal obligations designed to protect primary and old forests, and ecosystems with high biodiversity value,” she said.

Cleaner rockets

While rocket launches account for a tiny fraction of the space industry’s emissions, a number of companies are developing greener propellants, including using biofuels. In French Guiana, researchers are working to scale up biofuels production from micro algae.

Andreas Schütz, a chemical propellant expert at the German Aerospace Center (DLR), told Climate Home that producing rocket fuels from wood, using a process known as gasification, is feasible.

But Mike Mason, an engineer who researched biomass at Oxford University, said the process was “very expensive” and that burning wood to produce electricity remains inefficient.

“Wood is a renewable resource but burning it has a global warming impact,” said Mason, warning of the risk of creating a precedent for climate-damaging activities in the Amazon.

Negotiations on the draft rules are ongoing. Sources close to the discussions told Climate Home that while the EU Council showed willing to accommodate France’s request, the Commission was concerned about the biodiversity impacts.

France recently closed a consultation on requesting the waiver. The government said “minimal environmental guarantees” would be put in place to limit tree clearance for energy production purposes.

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Reuters exclusively accompanied raids led by environmental agency Ibama in the rainforest state of Para to stop loggers and ranchers illegally clearing the forest.

The agency also launched raids this week in the states of Roraima and Acre, Ibama environmental enforcement coordinator Tatiane Leite said.

About ten Ibama agents set out in pickup trucks on Thursday from their base in the municipality of Uruara, Pará, along with a dozen federal police, heading toward a cluster of points where satellite images showed loggers and ranchers recently at work clearing the forest illegally.

In twelve hours driving on dirt roads illegally crisscrossing an indigenous reserve, the convoy reached five areas that were deforested and burned around the time of last October’s election that pitted Lula against Bolsonaro.

An Ibama agent gets ready before going to an operation to combat of deforestation, in Uruara (Reuters/Ueslei Marcelino)

The areas all lay within the Cachoeira Seca indigenous reserve, where deforestation is strictly prohibited.

Four of the tracts appeared to be subsequently abandoned, with no signs people were living nearby or in the process of turning them into ranches. Agents said it could be a sign that illegal ranchers gave up on investing time and money in turning illegal land into productive pasture, knowing that Lula campaigned on a pledge to crack down on deforestation.

“People know that in this government enforcement will tighten and won’t let them use an area they deforested illegally,” said Givanildo dos Santos Lima, the agent leading Ibama’s Uruara mission.

“If the other government had won, you would have found people here, well-maintained pastures and cattle.”

Amazon deforestation has risen since Bolsonaro came to power in 2018.

The government under Bolsonaro had gutted staff and funding for environmental enforcement by Ibama in his four years in office, while the former president criticized Ibama for issuing fines to farmers and miners.

Bolsonaro gave the military and later the Justice Ministry authority over operations to fight deforestation, sidelining Ibama despite the agency’s extensive experience and success in fighting the destruction of the Amazon.

An area larger than Denmark was deforested under Bolsonaro, a 60% increase from the prior four years.

In another area of the reserve, agents found a newly built house with several chainsaws and stocked with weeks of food, indicating the occupants had likely fled just before Ibama’s arrival.

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Flanked by police with semiautomatic weapons, Ibama agents hacked a path through the adjacent jungle to reach an area the size of 57 football fields strewn with downed trees and charged trunks.

Some messily planted corn sprouted up to knee-level in what appeared to be an attempt to lay claim to the area to eventually turn it into cattle pasture, the agents said.

“We’ll come back with a helicopter and catch them by surprise,” Lima said.

He was optimistic that Ibama would be able to conduct more raids under Lula, aimed at fining deforesters and spooking criminals from attempting to clear more areas.

Lula on the campaign trail last year pledged to put Ibama back in charge of combating deforestation with beefed-up funding and personnel. He took office on January 1, so additional money and staff have yet to reach the front-line enforcers.

Bolsonaro’s government denied several requests by Reuters to accompany Ibama missions during his 2019-2022 administration. His government instituted a gag order forbidding Ibama agents from speaking to the press, which agents say has already been reversed.

Lula took office for the first time in 2003 when Amazon deforestation was near all-time highs, and through strict enforcement of environmental laws reduced it by 72% to a near record low when he left office in 2010.

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As part of the package, Brazil’s new leader reinstated the Amazon Fund, a $1.2 billion fund to protect of the world’s largest rainforest, after a three-year period of inactivity.  

Donors Germany and Norway suspended transfers to the fund in 2019, under the previous government of Jair Bolsonaro, after the former president unilaterally suspended the board of directors and the technical committee of the fund.

On Monday, Lula reinstated the fund’s governing body, which Norwegian environment minister Espen Barth Eide said “allows for an immediate reactivation of the fund”.  The UK’s environment minister Therese Coffey said the UK was “seriously looking at” joining the fund.

Destruction of Brazil’s Cerrado savanna soars for third year in a row

The fund, which was established during Lula’s second term in 2008, supports 102 conservation projects in the Amazon, among them forests managed by indigenous people and small-scale farms. 

Among the first executive mandates, Brazil’s new president also moved the Rural Environmental Registry —which tracks all rural land-ownership— from the agriculture to the environment ministry, extinguished the possibility of conciliating environmental fines and reactivated a plan to prevent and control deforestation in the Amazon. 

“There is still a long way to go, but what we’ve seen at the beginning of this mandate is a right start and demonstrates the importance that the issue has gained on Lula’s agenda,” said Marcio Astrini, executive secretary of the Brazilian NGO Climate Observatory. 

Green promises 

Lula was sworn into office for a third term on Sunday, after defeating rightwing incumbent Bolsonaro by a thin margin in October’s general election. Bolsonaro’s policies led to a 60% increase in deforestation in the Amazon.

Brazil’s new president promised to achieve zero deforestation in the Amazon and 100% renewable electricity during his inaugural speech, adding “Brazil does not need to cut down forests to keep and expand its strategic agricultural frontier”.

“The world expects Brazil to once again become a leader in tackling the climate crisis and an example of a socially and environmentally responsible country, capable of promoting economic growth with income distribution,” he said.

Lula will update Brazil’s ‘insufficient’ climate plans if elected: advisor

Lula appointed former environment minister and activist Marina Silva to once again lead the country’s green efforts. He also created the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples, to be led by the influential Amazonian leader Sônia Guajajara.

The new government’s environment team is promising, said Astrini, but he also warned that Lula will have to negotiate without a majority in Congress, which is dominated by legislators linked to Bolsonaro’s party and to the “ruralist” movement defending agribusiness in the Amazon.

A package of three Bolsonaro-era bills being discussed in Congress could trump Lula’s efforts to control deforestation in the Amazon. These projects would respectively allow for the relaxed use of pesticides, land-grabbing in public forests and weaker regulations for environmental permits.

“Our current Congress is extremely hostile to indigenous and environmental affairs. We have grown used to that. We need a government that defends the environment and that can face that Congress,” said Astrini.

This article was updated on 4 January to add that the UK is considering joining the fund

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Destruction of native vegetation rose by a quarter to 10,689 square kilometers (4,127 square miles) – an area larger than Lebanon. The data from space research agency Inpe is for the 12 months through to July 2022, compared with the same period the previous year.

The Cerrado, the world’s most species-rich savanna, has given way to Brazil’s expanding agricultural frontier for decades. Roughly half of the savanna’s vegetation has already been destroyed, with much of it converted to farms and ranches.

When far-right president Jair Bolsonaro came to power in 2019, deforestation in the Cerrado was at its lowest point for decades. It increased in every year of his time in office. Deforestation in the Amazon rainforest rose too.

Deforestation in the Cerrado has risen in Bolsonaro’s time in power, although it remains lower than previous decades. (Photo: INPE)

Bolsonaro will be replaced by left-winger Lula Ignacio da Silva in January, who has promised to combat deforestation and reduce it to zero in the Amazon rainforest.

Trade levers

The European Union recently agreed on a law to prohibit companies from selling agricultural products linked to deforestation, which would apply to the Amazon rainforest but excluded much of the Cerrado.

Asked about rising Cerrado destruction, EU Environment Commissioner Virginijus Sinkevicius said protections could be expanded.

“We have a review clause in just one year, we will have a look at it,” he said in an interview at the UN’s Cop15 nature summit in Montreal. “If we see patterns shifting to other ecosystems, we will be able to react relatively quickly.”

Governments split on ditching nature-harming subsidies in Montreal

Countries at Cop15 aim to strike a deal to protect areas rich in biodiversity like the Cerrado. But with the summit set to end on 19 December, negotiators still disagree on some 200 points, according to conference documents.

“What we eat and how we produce our food are the main drivers of this large-scale obliteration,” said Jean-Francois Timmers, a policy expert for environmental advocates WWF.

“We need Cop15 negotiators to prioritise ending deforestation and conversion in areas where the yearly rate of ecosystem losses prove alarming, like the Cerrado.”

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After a two-year delay and a change of location, the UN biodiversity summit aims to halt nature loss by 2030 and restore ecosystems. It could either be a success like the signing of the Paris Agreement or a dramatic failure like the 2009 climate summit in Copenhagen.

“Anything can happen. It would be terrible if we had a ‘Copenhagen’ because we would lose a golden opportunity to protect nature,” said Carlos Manuel Rodríguez, CEO of the Global Environmental Facility, the largest funder of biodiversity protection. 

Countries are set to define targets to stop biodiversity loss for the next ten years, with a coalition of more than a hundred nations calling to protect 30% of all land and ocean ecosystems by 2030. Big forested countries such as China, Brazil and Indonesia are yet to join the coalition.

A draft prepared in the lead up to the event remains disputed. Initially the text was “technically quite good” said Brian O’Donnell, director of the advocacy organization Campaign for Nature. But “we’ve had two years of online negotiations. What started as a very good framework has ended up almost all in square brackets” – indicating a lack of consensus.

Leadership vacuum

The meeting was originally scheduled to take place in 2020 in Kunming, China, but was repeatedly delayed over Covid concerns. Eventually Montreal offered to take over as host city. China keeps the presidency of the talks.

China has not officially invited world leaders. It fell to UN biodiversity chief Elizabeth Maruma Mrema to urge them to attend the event instead of the football World Cup, which is taking place in Qatar at the same time.

Scientists warn that a million species are threatened with extinction, due to the climate crisis and other threats like pollution and deforestation.

Analysis: What was decided at Cop27 climate talks in Sharm el-Sheikh?

Addressing the issue, however, is also a form of climate action, said Kiliparti Ramakrishna, senior advisor on ocean and climate policy at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. “Nature-based solutions are directly connected with biodiversity and yet we treat [climate and biodiversity] separately. That is not good,” he said.

There were some signs of that changing when Cop27 talks concluded in Egypt on Sunday. In a first for the UN climate process, the Sharm el-Sheikh Implentation Plan encouraged countries to consider “nature-based solutions or ecosystem-based approaches” to climate action.

In the past decade, countries agreed to a ten-year plan called the Aichi targets, aimed at halting biodiversity loss. A UN summary report shows countries failed to meet a single one of those targets.

“(Countries) set these strategies only once a decade. The past strategy failed and so this is the time to get it right. Biodiversity is declining too rapidly,” said O’Donnell. 

Funding gap

Rodríguez explained the lack of sufficient funds was one of the main reasons for the failure of the Aichi targets. That will be key this time around, both in setting up the agreement but also in its implementation.

Even if an agreement is reached, “it’s still just paper”, said Rodriguez. “Implementing (the targets) requires public policies and strong institutions. But many countries require investments to build those capacities in the first place,” he added.

The latest draft includes the target of mobilizing $200 billion per year, “including new, additional and effective financial resources”. To Ramakrishna, the Montreal summit “could be a Paris moment if we get the resolution on finance”. 

Crucially, a deal on finance must phase out subsidies for nature-destructive practices, Rodriguez said. This was also one of the Aichi targets, but “relatively few countries have taken steps even to identify incentives that harm biodiversity,” the UN summary report says. 

“Harmful subsidies far outweigh positive incentives in areas such as fisheries and the control of deforestation,” adds the report. The draft deal includes the goal of reducing these subsidies by $500 billion per year.

Other critical issues remain contested, among them the use of genetic resources. African countries have called on developed nations to pay for genetic information on their biodiversity, which is used in industries such as pharmaceutical companies.  

However, in the preliminary round of negotiations in Nairobi this year, countries did not agree on this issue.

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Behind security barriers, hundreds packed the Blue Zone pavilion where he was giving his first speech at the summit. One indigenous woman Facetimed a relative in Brazil: “Can you see him? Can you believe he’s right there?” she shouted over the phone.

At the Cop27 climate summit, expectations are high for Brazil’s newly elected leader. Lula won last month’s election promising a dramatic shift in rainforest protection. The outgoing government of Jair Bolsonaro leaves the country’s deforestation rate on a 12-year high.

“Brazil is leaving the cocoon where it was for the past four years,” he said in his first public appearance in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, on Wednesday. He started the previous evening, meeting with climate envoys from China and the US. 

Lula even announced a bid to bring Cop30 to the Amazon, in the state of Amazonas or Pará. It is the turn of a Latin American country to host in 2026. “People who defend the climate should know closely what is that region,” he said. 

Lula will update Brazil’s ‘insufficient’ climate plans if elected: advisor

How much he can live up to the task is yet to be seen. He has no majority in Congress and inflation is driving the country to the brink of recession. He admitted high expectations “scare” him in an interview with The New Yorker.

Still, the fate of the Amazon rainforest depends in great part on Lula. The world’s biggest rainforest basin is at a tipping point.

Recent studies found that, over the last decade, the Amazon started to emit more carbon than it absorbs through photosynthesis. This is mainly as a result of rainforest clearance for cattle ranches and soy plantations.

Politically motivated charges

In a previous term as president 2003-10, Lula cracked down on deforestation. Since then, the leftist politician has spent time in prison before dramatically resurrecting his reputation.

Four years ago, Lula was jailed in federal police headquarters in the state of Curitiba, charged with corruption and money laundering. The Supreme Court revoked his sentence, judging it biased by political opponents. Now, he’s back at UN climate talks having won a tight election against Bolsonaro.

“We have certainty that [Lula] will protect the indigenous territories, and that he will have a ministry for indigenous people. That is a relief for us,” said Thiago Yawanawá, an indigenous activist from the Amazonian state of Acre, while waiting for Lula’s speech. 

Latin America closes ranks at Cop27 around climate finance

Other biomes could also benefit from a Lula presidency, said Shirley Krenak, an indigenous leader from the state of Minas Gerais. “We are very hopeful with the new president. It was with Lula that we had more opportunities for dialogue,” she added. 

Lula’s approach goes further. Marina Silva, a lawmaker tipped for the environment ministry, said the government does not want “an isolated protection only in Brazil. We want protection in all mega-forested countries.” 

Two days earlier, at a G20 leaders summit, Brazil signed a pact with Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to tackle deforestation.

DRC vice-minister Eve Bazaiba hinted on Twitter this should inspire rich countries to deliver finance “proportional to the ecosystem services given to mankind”.

Contributors to the Amazon Fund froze payments during Bolsonaro’s term – but were quick to congratulate Lula on his win.

Challenge ahead 

Bolsonaro’s policies left a destructive trail in the Amazon. His administration defunded environmental protection agencies and rolled back indigenous rights and environmental protections.

A legislative package that would allow farmers to claim rainforest land is ready to vote in the Senate and could pass before Bolsonaro’s term ends.

Brazil can only protect the Amazon with consistent policies over time, the head of the Global Environmental Facility Carlos Manuel Rodríguez told Climate Home.

Silva, on her part, said she’s aware of the challenge ahead. On one hand, inflation is driving the country towards a difficult economic situation. On the other, the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Resources saw a recent 24% slash in its budget. 

In the past, under Lula, Brazil was able to drastically reduce forest loss with its own resources, said Tasso Azevedo, former chief of the Brazilian Forest Service. The new government now has the experience to do it again, he said.

“A lot of things can be done with the right political decisions. Once they start to have results, it’s kind of easy to push for funds.”

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At Cop26 in Glasgow, UK, 145 nations representing over 90% of the world’s forests promised to “strengthen” their efforts to conserve forests.

Since then, there have been no major joint meetings following up on this pledge nor any organisation set up to take it forward.

On the ground, deforestation has increased in the Brazilian Amazon, the Democratic Republic of Congo is auctioning off oil blocks in its rainforests and the UK is off track to meet its own tree-planting targets. All three signed the Cop26 pledge.

On Monday at Cop27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, the UK launched a “forest and climate leaders partnership” to “ensure a long-term delivery mechanism” for the Glasgow pledge.

European nations delay fossil fuel finance ban, blaming energy crisis

At the time of launch, 26 countries representing a third of the world’s forests had signed up for the partnership.

These include the US, Canada, Japan, much of Europe and several Amazon nations. The US and Ghana will co-chair the partnership.

Partners pledge “to halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030 while delivering sustainable development and promoting an inclusive rural transformation”.

No-shows

Notably absent from the list are Russia, Brazil, China, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Peru. Between them, they hold nearly half the world’s forests.

Brazil will have a new president in January, who has promised to reduce deforestation to zero. The partnership is open to new members.

The only new public finance expected is for Germany to double its international aid for forests from €1 billion ($1bn) to €2bn ($2bn) by 2025.

At Cop26, twelve donor countries announced $12bn of public finance for forest protection. Nearly a quarter of this has already been spent across the developing world.

The UK government trailed $3.6bn of new private finance commitments, on top of the $7.2bn committed at Cop26.

Member countries will each lead or support on at least one action area, “as the principal mechanism to scale and drive delivery”, the UK government said.

These areas are international collaboration on sustainable land use economy and supply chains, mobilising public finance, shifting private finance, supporting indigenous peoples’ and local community initiatives, strengthening and scaling carbon markets for forests and building international partnerships and incentives to preserve high-integrity forests.

Cop27 movers and shakers: Nine people shaping the climate agenda

Within each action area, the partnership will support, lead, establish or showcase, as appropriate, one or more initiatives as the principal mechanism to scale and drive delivery.

Globally, people are cutting down forests for farmland, mining, lumber and to accommodate growing cities.

Between 2000 and 2020, the world lost 2% of its forests. This sped up in the 2010s.

This article was corrected after publication to show that Australia signed up.

The post As Glasgow forest pledge turns to action, most signatories drop out appeared first on Climate Home News.

The vote has raised environmentalists’ hopes that the Amazon rainforest will be protected from ranchers, illegal loggers and gold miners.

While Bolsonaro gutted environmental protection agencies and oversaw a rise in deforestation, Lula’s previous tenure as president saw a steady decline in forest clearance.

Deforestation speeds up climate change as the trees and soil, particularly in untouched rainforest, suck in carbon dioxide.

“For climate, [Lula’s election] is a huge hope,” Lula’s environmental advisor and former environment minister Izabella Teixeira told Climate Home News. She said that climate action and “a new relationship between humankind and nature” are critical to Brazil’s economic development.

“We know that we need to work hard but [we] now have a president that believes and is committed not only to tackle deforestation but to move forward to make sure that [we] can promote inclusive development,” she added.

In his victory speech, Lula pledged to reduce the level of forest destruction in the Brazilian Amazon to zero. According to another former environment minister Marina Silva, Lula’s administration will turn areas of the Amazon the size of France into indigenous or nature reserves. This would introduce harsher penalties for illegal deforestation in these areas.

But Amazon campaigners warned that right-wing control of Congress and the “inertia” of rising deforestation would make this target hard to achieve.

Claudio Angelo, a spokesperson for NGO Climate Observatory, told Climate Home that right-wing forces in Congress were likely to continue to support Bolsonaro until Lula takes office on 1 January. That means lawmakers will try to pass 14 bills to further weaken environmental regulations and indigenous rights before Lula takes over.

That would “make it very, very hard for Lula to rein in deforestation, pollution and stop the massacre of indigenous peoples,” Angelo warned.

“We call those bills the ‘destruction package’ and they include permanent amnesty to land-grabbing, mining in indigenous lands and the end of environmental impact assessments,” he said.

Cop27 movers and shakers: Nine people shaping the climate agenda

More than 90% of deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon is illegal. Government agencies like Ibama are tasked with stopping it. But Bolsonaro appointed people to head the agency who refused to spend most of its budget and restricted what its employees could do.

Over the last four years, Ibama had a large budget. But Bolsonaro-appointed officials just weren’t willing to spend it on inspections and enforcement, Angelo said.

Lula’s appointees are likely to spend it in full. And Congress members associated with the centre-right Centrão coalition, which votes with whoever is in power, could even support a request to increase Ibama’s budget, Angelo said.

Environmental protection could also be funded from abroad. Until Bolsonaro came to power, Norway and Germany funded Amazon protection through the Amazon Fund. Teixeira told Climate Home the fund “will be crucial to [finance] environmental enforcement”.

In 2019, Bolsonaro abolished the fund’s technical committee and in response Norway stopped its donations. The fund has not launched a new project since Bolsonaro became president.

Following Lula’s victory, Norway’s environment minister tweeted: “Norway looks forward to revitalising our extensive climate and forest partnership with Brazil.” The leaders of Canada, Germany and Australia also mentioned climate or environmental cooperation in their congratulatory tweets.

President-elect @Lulaoficial championed the protection of the Amazon and its people throughout his campaign as well as in his acceptance speech. Norway looks forward to revitalizing our extensive climate and forest partnership with Brazil. @climateforest

— Espen Barth Eide (@EspenBarthEide) October 31, 2022

André Guimarães, director of the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (Ipam), told Climate Home that “inertia” was another challenge. “That land-grabbing that took place over the last two or three years will be generating deforestation… in the next few years,” he said.

Internationally, Lula’s administration plans to work with its Amazon neighbours by organising a summit on forest protection in early 2023. And it intends to work with the Democratic Republic of Congo and Indonesia in an alliance of rainforest nations at Cop27 next week. 

Lula’s government will update the “insufficient” 2030 climate plan that Bolsonaro put together, Teixeira previously told Climate Home. On Monday, she said: “It takes time to review and develop new deals and visions.”

Lula plans to encourage state oil company Petrobras to diversify into renewables, fertilisers and biofuels. But, he said, Petrobras should expand oil production in the short term.

Bolsonaro, who has yet to accept defeat, has for months attempted to undermine the legitimacy of Brazil’s electoral system. His loss was much narrower than polls had initially forecast and there are concerns he could challenge the results.

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Currently, companies who have cut down forests since 1994 cannot get a green certification from the Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC) for their wood products like pulp and paper. As some buyers insist on certification, this restricts their opportunities to sell.

But, at the Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC) assembly in Indonesia yesterday, the FSC’s members overwhelmingly voted to allow these companies to be certified, as long as they restore the same amount of forests they have destroyed between 1994 and 2020. No deforestation after 2020 will be allowed.

The #FSCGA22 passed Motion 37 yesterday. This means that the FSC Principles & Criteria will be changed to allow companies that converted natural forests up to 2020 to be certified. This also means more transparency and forest restoration efforts, which will be closely monitored. pic.twitter.com/qsGiXY0QtD

— Aida Greenbury (@AidaGreenbury) October 14, 2022

The move was broadly welcomed by green NGOs and by logging companies, particularly in Indonesia, who are keen to gain FSC certification.

Greenpeace New Zealand’s Grant Rosoman told Climate Home: “There’s a lot of environmental and social benefits that come from this and they outweigh the risks of it being abused or not being interpreted properly”.

Restoration would be good for the climate. According to an article in Nature magazine, written by University College of London professor Simon Lewis and others, “plantations are much poorer at storing carbon than are natural forests” because they release carbon when they are harvested.

A 2018 Science magazine study used satellite imagery to estimate that a quarter of deforestation between 2001 and 2015 was due to forestry—with natural forest replaced by forest plantations. Most of the rest was due to agriculture or wildfire.

The land restored should ideally be in the same place as the deforested land and will have to be close by. To count as restored, at least 30% of it should be left untouched while the remaining 70% can be logged.

Companies must also offer social restoration to communities affected by their deforestation. This can include handing land back to them, financial compensation, employment or infrastructure.

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Forestry adviser Aida Greenbury also supported the move. But she questioned whether the pulp and paper companies would follow through with the restoration needed to get certified.

Greenbury, a former sustainability director for Indonesian logger Asia Pulp and Paper, said some companies may be happy to just be in the process of certification in order to greenwash their credentials to prospective customers.

A 2019 study found that timber plantations had caused 1,2 million hectares of natural forest to be destroyed in Indonesia between 2001 and 2016. That’s an area the size of Jamaica.

“How can they restore forests for one million hectares?” Greenbury asked. “That’s the question that still needs to be answered”.

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The South American country of 212 million —and the world’s sixth largest greenhouse gas emitter— is headed to a second electoral round 30 October. In the running are incumbent Jair Bolsonaro and former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who led the first round of voting with 48.4% of the votes.

Izabella Teixeira, Brazil’s former environment minister under Lula and head of his environment team, promised to update country’s nationally determined contribution (NDC) to the Paris Agreement, which outlines its plans to cut emissions.

“It is evident that Brazil’s numbers today are insufficient. These will be reviewed and Brazil’s NDC will once again become an instrument for the country’s credibility for Brazilians and the international community. Brazil needs a new NDC,” she said.

Independent analysts at Climate Action Tracker rate Brazil’s latest 2030 emissions target as “almost sufficient” to hold global temperature rise below 2C. But policy action was “insufficient” to deliver, they judged, citing rising deforestation and an expanded role for fossil oil and gas in energy plans.

As Brazil’s Congress swings further right, environmentalists pin hopes on Lula

In the lead up to the election, climate activists pushed for Lula’s campaign to update Brazil’s NDC in the first 100 days of government. Teixeira declined to commit to such a deadline.

The next government first needs to revisit the technical studies that form the basis for targets in the context of development goals, she said. “We need to understand what is on the table, understand what society wants, (aim to) make a big pact, because the private sector has advanced, the financial sector has advanced.”

There is insufficient data to understand the “industrial transition” and role of Brazil’s voluntary carbon market, Teixeira added. “We can’t be irresponsible, say that we have renegotiated and delivered anything. I built the most ambitious NDC that Brazil has ever done, in 2015, and it took a year.”

If Lula wins the presidential election, he faces the challenge of rebuilding Brazil’s environmental image while working with a Congress that has swung further to the right.

Brazil proposed its first NDC in September 2015 and has updated it twice since, in 2020 and in 2022. In both updates, made under Bolsonaro’s term as president, the country used accounting tricks to weaken its climate goals.

Gap to 1.5C yawns, as most governments miss UN deadline to improve climate plans

In 2020, the country committed to a 37% emission reduction by 2025 and 43% by 2030, but changed the baseline year for the calculation. This allowed for more emissions than the previous version, violating the Paris Agreement. 

After pressure from civil society and the international community, Brazil updated its NDC in April 2022, but it still allows the emission of 73 MtCO2e more than what was first proposed in 2015. 

The revision of the NDC is one of the proposals listed in the document Brazil 2045, presented in May this year by the Climate Observatory, a network of 73 civil society organizations, for the country to go beyond carbon neutrality in 2050.

The document was delivered to all candidates except to the current president Jair Bolsonaro. For the organization, “with Bolsonaro there is no future for environmental policy in Brazil”.

Revisiting the country’s current target is a fundamental step for Brazil to rebuild trust with the international community, said Stela Herschmann, climate policy expert at the Climate Observatory. This alone is not enough, she added, as the goal must align with scientific evidence. 

“We need to present an implementation strategy, which we don’t have today. We don’t say how we are going to reach the number. We also need a long-term goal, we need to talk about adaptation and make sure that the NDC allows effective public participation”, he says.

Comment: The fate of the Amazon rests on the outcome of Brazil’s election

According to Teixeira, Lula’s priority is to curb deforestation, the country’s main source of emissions, which has surged to a decade high under Bolsonaro. 

In the last four years, deforestation in the Amazon increased by more than 50% and forest fires in the region have also increased. Environmental crimes are on the rise, including the illegal occupation of land in protected areas, invasions of indigenous territories and the assassination of indigenous leaders.

During the years 2020 and 2021, Brazil’s greenhouse gas emissions increased by 9.5%. Of all emissions, 46% are due to deforestation, mainly driven by illegal mining and livestock expansion. 

Preliminary reports indicate that in 2022 deforestation will reach record levels in the Amazon region.

“Combating deforestation is an ethical question… It is not an economic activity, it is one of control and inspection. We will do this and, at the same time, design mitigation and resilience strategies,” said the former minister. 

Tackling deforestation is Brazil’s “greatest challenge” but also “its greatest opportunity”, said Herschmann. “We have a competitive advantage, a gigantic forest, and we can invest in reforestation to increase carbon reabsorption.”

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After consistently leading in the polls against the far-right incumbent, challenger Lula, the 76-year-old former president who was first elected 20 years ago, came out on top with 48% of the votes.

The outcome wasn’t the outright majority Lula’s supporters had hoped would lead the former union leader to win in a single round.

Bolsonaro’s supporters celebrated a victory. With 43% of the votes, Bolsonaro performed better in all of Brazil’s 27 states than Ipec, one of Brazil’s largest polling firms, had predicted.

The results mean the election will go to a runoff on 30 October in one of the world’s most consequential elections ever for the climate.

At the same time, Sunday’s vote saw a surge in pro-Bolsonaro lawmakers enter the national Congress, which remains dominated by right-wing forces.

Brazilian climate analysts say the Congress makeup will remain a major obstacle for passing new climate and conservation policies. But a Lula win at the end of the month would have a greater impact in undoing four years of destructive policies in the Amazon.

Brazil election: Lula challenges Bolsonaro’s deforestation record, backs oil development

Climate and rainforest conservation issues have emerged as major issues in one of Brazil’s most polarised campaigns.

Both Lula and Bolsonaro plan to increase Brazil’s oil and gas production and proposed measures to halt deforestation to attract voters.

But Bolsonaro’s deforestation record and attacks on the rights of indigenous peoples, environmental and human right defenders, tell a radically different story. Under his term, deforestation in the Amazon rose to a 12-year high.

In contrast, deforestation fell sharply from a 2004 peak when Lula was in power from 2003 to 2010. Carlos Rittl, a Brazilian senior policy advisor at the Rainforest Foundation in Norway cited cross-government coordination, the creation of protected areas and the demarcation of indigenous reserves for the drop in forest clearance.

“There will be an abyss of difference between what we can expect from Lula’s government and Bolsonaro’s. Bolsonaro is a carbon bomb. With Lula, there is hope that the main problems that Brazil is facing will be addressed,” said Rittl.

A Lula victory would see Bolsonaro become the first incumbent president to lose a re-election bid since the start of Brazil’s modern democracy in 1988.

However, the make-up of Congress, which is notoriously fragmented with dozens of political parties represented, will make his task a lot harder.

Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party (PL) now holds 99 of the 513 seats in the lower house – the largest share and an increase of 31 seats. His party also has the highest number of seats in the upper house.

At least seven of Bolsonaro’s former ministers were also elected to Congress including Ricardo Salles, who stepped down from environment while under investigation for alleged collusion with illegal logging, and former agriculture minister Tereza Cristina.

The centre-right Centrão coalition, which allies with anyone in power, and has propped up Bolsonaro during his four years in office, remains the dominant force.

Rittl said that the high number of seats gained by pro-Bolsonaro lawmakers was in part attributed to large sums of public money being invested in their constituencies from a “secret budget”, that could be spent at the discretion of the Centrão coalition.  “It has had a much higher impact than any election funding,” he said.

There was some good news for environmental defenders. For the first time, two indigenous women, Sônia Guajajara and Célia Xakriabá, were elected to Congress’ lower house.

Comment: The fate of the Amazon rests on the outcome of Brazil’s election

If he wins at the end of the month, Lula will need to pursue coalitions with the center-right to govern and pass laws. “Of course, there will be trade-offs,” said Rittl.

Marcio Astrini, executive secretary of the climate NGO coalition Climate Observatory, told Climate Home, that the right-wing dominated Congress will continue to “try and impose setbacks on the environmental agenda in Brazil”.

But a Lula victory would outweigh any obstruction by Congress, he added. That’s because Brazil’s president has a right to veto any bill or legislative proposal.

A suite of laws weakening environmental protection and indigenous rights is currently awaiting legislative approval in Congress. Astrini said a Lula government could amend their contents or, as a last resort, scrap them.

And while it might be difficult for a Lula government to pass new legislation, Brazil already has an array of climate and Amazon protection laws and regulations which the Bolsonaro administration violated or sought to reverse that could now be implemented, said Ana Toni, executive director of the Institute for Climate and Society.

“Lula would still have a lot of power to move in the direct direction,” she told Climate Home. “If Lula gets into government, keeps democracy strong and implements the laws that we have, it would be a huge achievement.”

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Since coming to power January 2019, Bolsonaro has led an onslaught against the government agencies and legal frameworks designed to protect forests and Indigenous Peoples’ rights, dragging Brazil back to the wild west days we thought we’d left behind more than two decades ago.

The cost can be measured in environmental destruction and human suffering.

Deforestation in the Amazon has risen more than 50% during his presidency. Violent land conflicts and illegal invasions of Indigenous territories and other protected areas have surged. And a record number of Indigenous People have been murdered.

It’s no exaggeration then, to say that the Amazon’s fate rests on the outcome of our election on 2 October. If Bolsonaro wins another term in office the world’s biggest rainforest could pass its tipping point.

If he loses, we have the chance to bring it – and Brazil – back from the brink.

Reviving Mercosur

Bolsonaro lags in the polls behind his main rival, former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. If – as looks likely – Lula is declared president, his government will face a flood of challenges.

Reviving the trade deal that the European Union (EU) struck with the Mercosur bloc of nations – Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay – in 2019, is among them. The deal has potentially negative consequences for Indigenous Peoples’ rights, as well as deforestation in the Amazon, the Cerrado and our other precious biomes.

The trade deal that the EU agreed after 20 years of negotiations would cut tariffs worth billions of euros a year on goods imported into the EU from Brazil and other Mercosur nations. It stalled in 2020 however, partly over concerns it would intensify land seizures and environmental damage from producing more soy and beef. The EU proposed a side letter to the agreement with environmental guarantees, but hasn’t drafted it yet.

Lula has indicated that he wants to reopen talks on the deal, building in more climate, environmental and human rights protections. He also wants concessions from the EU on promoting the development of Brazilian industry. This could appease the industrial workers who are his historical support base. Along with many civil society groups, they have long opposed the EU-Mercosur trade deal.

The new administration must consult Brazil’s grassroots movements and civil society on the deal. Until now, the EU has paid these groups insufficient attention, despite them proving to be such an important pillar of democracy – and a bulwark against its erosion – over the past few years. Their well-founded environmental and social concerns about the deal must be addressed through concrete actions.

Dismantling Bolsonarism

The most pressing issue for us is to combat the illegal activity that Bolsonaro allowed to flourish. Under his watch, criminal gangs had a free rein to maraud the Amazon: for mining, fishing, drug trafficking and other nefarious activities.

Those perceived as obstacles to their activities – including Bruno Pereira, Dom Phillips and numerous Indigenous People, such as the forest protector Paulo Paulino Guajajara – paid the ultimate price.

Criminals operate largely with the support of corrupt local authorities. There are now 10,000 kilometres of illegal roads in the Amazon, and guns and violence have proliferated.

Those whose criminal activities have thrived under Bolsonaro are not going to simply stop because there’s a new government in place. What’s more, even if Bolsonaro accepts defeat, he will still have two or three months in office before he hands over power – enough time to wreak more havoc. This could include pushing through a number of damaging bills – including one related to using Indigenous territories for mining, one weakening the environmental licensing regulation and a land grabbing bill – all of which will increase the threat of deforestation in the Amazon, and turn currently illegal activities into legal ones.

In short, the current regime will still have a lot of power, both with their guns on the ground and in Congress.

Despite all this, in Brazilian civil society there is a feeling of hope and pride.

Hope for the democratic future of our country. Pride because Bolsonaro wasn’t able to achieve half of what he wanted, largely due to the resistance and strength of civil society activists and others.

Adriana Ramos coordinates the policy and law program of the Instituto Socioambiental (ISA). She is an NGO representative on the guidance committee of the Amazon Fund and coordinates the Brazilian NGO Forum working group on forests.

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Aurelie Shapiro, the lead author on an upcoming report by the Food and Agricultural Organization, said an oil rush risked wiping out the benefits from promoting sustainable farming and energy use.

At the end of July, the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) opened an auction for 27 oil and 3 gas blocks. Some of these overlap with a tropical peatland complex, one of the world’s biggest carbon sinks.

Oil majors including Total, Eni, Exxon Mobil, BP, Equinor and Shell have ruled out bidding. But campaigners fear smaller companies with less scrutiny and lower operating standards could take the risk.

Citing the work of climate scientist Simon Lewis and Greenpeace campaigning, Shapiro described this as “a giant carbon bomb”.

It raises questions on the priorities of climate finance in the region. The Central African Forest Initiative (Cafi) supports six countries in the Congo Basin to preserve the forest, meet development goals and reduce poverty with funding from eight donor countries.

On a webpage about its work in the DRC, Cafi states that “forest loss is due to poverty, to a local need for land and forest products (small-scale slash-and-burn agriculture and charcoal) exacerbated by strong population growth”.  It doesn’t mention any other drivers.

A $500m deal signed between Cafi and DRC bans oil drilling only where it is “incompatible with conservation objectives in Protected Areas”. It does not identify the carbon value of peatlands as grounds to prevent development.

Prevailing wisdom

Charcoal production has dominated the narrative about deforestation in DRC because its use is ubiquitous in the country. Only 17% of the population had access to electricity by 2019, according to the World Bank. The government says the rate is 9%. Fast-expanding urban areas like Kinshasa drive a huge demand for charcoal briquettes.

But Shapiro said it was unlikely to be a main driver of forest loss.

The FAO study, commissioned by Cafi, takes a detailed look at the drivers of deforestation and forest degradation annually in the Congo Basin from 2016 to 2020.

Researchers checked high-resolution satellite imagery of more than 12,000 sample plots in the region going back to 2015. The findings are due to be published in the autumn, subject to peer review.

They found that deforestation during the period was much higher than before 2015, but hasn’t increased year-on-year. “Everybody is saying that deforestation [in the Congo basin] is exploding. We aren’t seeing this,” Shapiro said.

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The study confirms that small-scale agriculture remains the most widespread deforestation driver in the region.

It identifies important forest degradation, much of which is likely to be caused by charcoal production. But the data is patchy.

While satellite imagery has become better at identifying small forest clearings, it cannot determine why the trees are being felled.

A 2018 study in Science Advances estimated that charcoal production does not exceed 10% of forest loss in DRC.

‘Nibbling on the edge’

Without access to chainsaws or heavy machinery, “people are nibbling on the edge of the forest,” Shapiro explained. They don’t cut the biggest trees, which store the most carbon.

Importantly, she added, this has a shorter-lived impact on the forest than industrial activities such as mining and large-scale agriculture. Oil drilling, which has yet to start in the region, is not in the scope of the FAO study.

Slash-and-burn techniques are used by communities to clear trees close to villages. They plant and grow crops for three to five years in one place before leaving the land fallow, allowing wild vegetation to return. The younger trees can in turn be felled to produce charcoal. “The point is to stop blaming people who have no alternative,” she said.

The DRC government argues that the country needs oil and gas exploitation to boost economic growth and lift people out of poverty.

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Civil society groups welcomed the reframing of the debate on deforestation in the region.

Alphonse Valivambene, a civil society leader in Eastern DRC, told Climate Home that poor rural communities had been “an easy target to blame” for the country’s poor forest governance. They received barely any climate finance.

Valivambene called for a more “holistic” approach to policy that considers the poverty people live in.

The Rainforest Foundation has long argued the models that informed funding and policies for reducing emissions from deforestation in the Congo basin were based on “simplistic assumptions”.

“The disproportionate targeting of small-scale agriculture, which mostly occurs on a rotational basis on the periphery of villages, has allowed industrial threats to go unchecked,” said Joe Eisen, executive director of the Rainforest Foundation UK.

Earlier this month, the NGO sounded the alarm on a road-building project threatening a 200,000 hectare intact forest in Cameroon. It argued the road would not connect existing villages and wouldn’t contribute to local development.

Cafi declined to comment before the study is formally published.

This article was updated to clarify the scope of the Food and Agricultural Organization draft report, which does not directly address oil development. Opinions expressed on oil are the researcher’s own, based on other sources of evidence.

The post Oil not charcoal the biggest threat to Congo rainforest, top researcher warns appeared first on Climate Home News.

I am only 25 years old but my people have been living in the Amazon rainforest for at least 6,000 years. I follow our ancient traditions that allow us to live in harmony with nature and protect the rainforest in which we live.

When corporations look at my home in the Amazon rainforest, they don’t see the intricacies of the trees’ roots, the way they weave their way in and out of rich soil. They don’t pay attention to the sound of raindrops as they hit leaves, small and large. They do not see a land capable of sustaining life on Earth, a land that needs protection, a land that is sacred. Instead, they see commodities. 

Today, my peoples’ mission to protect nature is becoming impossible. The climate is warming rapidly, the animals are disappearing and the flowers are not blooming like they did before. 

And when we try to protect our environment from the powers that be, we are bullied, harassed, and sometimes even murdered.

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My childhood friend, Ari Uru-eu-wau-wau, was murdered for protecting the forests from illegal loggers, farmers and miners. His story is shared in a documentary I helped produce called The Territory. It was co-produced by the Indigenous Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau people and chronicles their struggle to defend the land on which Ari and his ancestors have lived for millennia. 

The murder of British journalist Dom Phillips and indigenous expert Bruno Pereira in the Amazon is not an isolated case. It’s a tragedy that there are so many other cases like this..

My husband is also a journalist based in the Amazon and he has received death threats for reporting on illegal activities. My father, my mother and so many of my friends also face regular intimidation and threats for defending their ancestral land. 

The justice we are calling for extends beyond those holding the guns that are killing Earth defenders. We want Brazil’s leaders whose actions or lack thereof, are allowing this violence to go rampant, to be held to account too. 

Since President Jair Bolsonaro took office in Brazil three years ago, his administration has made it a priority to weaken environmental protections. The government agency supposed to protect Indigenous Peoples’ rights, was turned against us. This has resulted in grim records for deforestation in Brazil. 

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Despite the  government’s pledges at  Cop26 to end and reverse deforestation by 2030, the Brazilian Amazon saw a 64% jump in deforestation in the first three months of 2022 compared to the previous year – which was already up from the year before that. 

Although international  pressure from companies and countries which buy agricultural products from Brazil has increased, we cannot ignore the fact that several multinational corporations are still profiting from the anti-environment and anti-indigenous legislation being pushed in Brazil.

That’s why my father, the great Chief Almir Suruí, together with Chief Raoni Metuktire of the Kayapo people, presented a formal request to the International Criminal Court in The Hague last year to investigate what is happening in Brazil. They are demanding that those responsible are held accountable for crimes against humanity. 

As we wait for a decision, we wonder: will our  evidence be taken seriously? Will the countries that promised to uphold human rights and protect the Earth keep their word? How many more will be killed in a senseless war on the environment and those who protect it before things change?

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And much like we must protect  peoples’ rights, we need to defend the ecosystems that support us. This is why I am calling on the international community to request the International Criminal Court to recognise the crime of ecocide. Courts around the world have long claimed that they want to fight environmental crime. Now they have the chance to turn their words into actions and recognise the attacks against my home in the Amazon for what they are: ecocide.

I ask world leaders, especially from the Global North: Have you given up living on Earth? Why do indigenous peoples have to protect more than 80% of the world’s biodiversity with so little support while the rich dream of  colonising other planets? 

The mistakes that have brought us to this climate crisis are a heavy burden. But you cannot run away from it. We can still fight! Join us and support indigenous land defenders. 

I have been raised with the understanding that in order to live harmoniously on this planet we must listen to the stars, the moon, the wind, the animals and the trees. We must listen to the Earth. She is speaking and her message is clear: we have no time to waste. 

Txai Suruí is an Indigenous leader and activist from the Brazilian Amazon. She leads the Rondônia Indigenous Youth Movement and the Kanindé Association and is the executive producer of the award-winning documentary The Territory.

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Some rainforests are already emitting more carbon dioxide than they absorb, further destabilising the global climate. At current trends, all primary rainforest in the Congo basin – the world’s second largest rainforest – could be cleared by the end of the century.

Given the grim state of the world’s forests, we need to seize every opportunity to do right with nature.

The UN Convention on Biological Diversity summit, or Cop15, relocated to Montreal, Canada, in December this year could be the “Paris moment” for biodiversity, as the 2015 Paris Agreement was for climate.

In Montreal, countries are expected to agree on a global framework to halt biodiversity loss this decade.

As biodiversity negotiators convene this week in Nairobi, Kenya, to prepare the meeting, they must wake up to another crucial truth: Indigenous Peoples and local communities are better at managing their lands than anyone else.

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Data gathered across countries and continents consistently shows that when people living in forests are left to run them, the result is better-protected ecosystems and biodiversity than any other conservation model.

Deforestation industries – whether loggers or agribusiness – are well aware of this. While they clear forests, Indigenous Peoples and local communities are being displaced, abused, and murdered.

Delegations attending the biodiversity Cop15 summit are expected to discuss safeguards for recognising the rights and roles of Indigenous Peoples and local communities in conserving nature. So far, discussions haven’t included any concrete commitments.

To protect biodiversity effectively, and ethically, Cop15 must recognise tangible protections for the rights of Indigenous Peoples. That should include creating a new and separate category for Indigenous land, one that puts them as the centre of decision-making and funding.

Currently, there exists two types of conservation designation: protected areas and other effective area-based conservation measures when conservation is supposedly achieved even though it isn’t the formal objective of land management.

In Nairobi, countries should agree to create a third category for land which is fully governed by Indigenous Peoples and local communities.

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In all protected areas where Indigenous Peoples and local communities live, they must be fully involved in the decision-making processes and management of the area.

The threats are not just the chainsaws and bulldozers of multinational companies seeking to extract natural resources, but “fortress conservation”, which closes off land and forests to human activities.

There is a difficult history not only between forest dwelling Indigenous Peoples and local communities and industries but also with traditional conservationists. Unlike traditional conservation NGOs or government-run parks’ administrators, Indigenous Peoples and local communities consider the forest their home.

Fortress conservation is the result of the exclusion of Indigenous Peoples’ rights from conservation frameworks. This has often led to chronic human right abuses in the form of rape, torture, and killing of forest communities by so-called eco-guards, which has been well-documented in Central Africa.

The latest confrontation took place shortly before the start of the Nairobi talks, when Tanzanian authorities were seen opening fire on Maasai communities opposing the demarcation of a game reserve, which would ban all human settlements and grazing in the area.

Creating a game reserve for tourism by violently evicting the land’s inhabitants isn’t “conserving nature.” It’s a renewed form of colonialism.  

Tanzanian authorities seen opening fire on Maasai people in game reserve dispute

The global deal for nature due to be agreed in Montreal later this year is an opportunity to shun this type of fortress conservation and embrace change.

That means formally recognising the rights of Indigenous Peoples to their ancestral lands and natural resources.

In recent years, some progress has been made. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, it is now possible for forest communities to formally receive rights over a forest concession.

But the Congolese government and donor countries need to do more to make this option accessible to communities.

And across the world, there are still many billions of dollars invested in sustaining this problematic “fortress conservation” model.

Being serious about forest community rights means investing far more in the formal process of recognising Indigenous Peoples’ land rights, management, and decision making, and protecting Indigenous knowledge.

Negotiations taking place in Nairobi this week must be a turning point for Indigenous People’s rights in biodiversity conservation. Allowing NGOs and government agencies to remain the primary beneficiaries of conservation funds would be a huge failure of the UN Biodiversity talks.

The Cop15 biodiversity summit is the moment to lay the groundwork for a new system that protects forests, wildlife and people, which is both effective and just.

Irene Wabiwa Betoko is the international project leader for the Congo Basin forest at Greenpeace Africa. 

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Nine of the blocks are located in a region of the Congo Basin known as the Cuvette Centrale, an area about a third of the size of California which is home to the world’s largest tropical peatland complex. At least three of the blocks up for auction directly overlap with the peatlands, according to the Rainforest Foundation UK.

Scientists estimate the peatlands store the equivalent of three years of global CO2 emissions.

Left undisturbed, this tropical peat swamp forest is likely to remain a carbon sink and counteract some global heating. But if the peat is drained or the land converted to other use, it could become a significant source of emissions.

Inviting big oil into the Congo Basin would have “cataclysmic consequences for the global climate and local communities,” said Greenpeace Africa.

“The plan for big oil companies to trash Congo’s most sensitive ecosystems is a historic error that must be scrapped immediately,” added Irene Wabiwa Betoko, the NGOs’ international project leader for the Congo Basin forest for Greenpeace Africa.

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Oil production in DRC is currently limited to 25,000 barrels per day, all of which is exported. Minutes from the cabinet meeting on 8 April show the government is hoping to increase production to bolster its revenues.

The country has the second largest crude oil reserves in central and southern Africa after Angola.

Oil majors including Total and Eni already have concessions in the Cuvette Centrale region, although no exploration has taken place so far. In 2019, Total’s CEO Patrick Pouyanné told local journalists the company was willing to undertake seismic surveys in the region to “help Congo to evaluate its resources”.

In an overview of the country’s oil and gas sector published at the end of last year, the US International Trade Administration said “there is room” for American companies with “experience in complex and fragile environments to establish a foothold in the DRC”.

Campaigners say oil drilling in the DRC’s forests contradicts the government’s plan to become a “solution country” to climate change, by storing carbon in its forests and generating energy from hydropower in the Congo River and its tributaries.

A major UN science report published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change earlier this month warned that an expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure will lock in high emissions, blowing past international temperature goals.

A scientific research team from the UK and DRC is pictured taking the first samples from the peatland in the Grande Cuvette in 2017 (Photo: Kevin McElvaney/Greenpeace)

The planned tender for new oil blocks comes amid serious concerns over the government’s ability to control deforestation in the word’s second largest rainforest.

A scathing audit published last month implicated six former ministers in the allocation of at least 18 illegal concessions.

Meanwhile, deforestation levels have plateaued at nearly half a million hectares of primary forest loss a year since 2016 – an area about three times the size of London.

Joe Eisen is executive director of the Rainforest Foundation UK, which is working to establish community-based forest management in the country. He told Climate Home oil exploitation in the Congo Basin would be “an unmitigated disaster for the climate and hundreds of forest-dependent communities in the peatlands and elsewhere”.

The recent developments in DRC’s forest sector have put international donors in an uncomfortable position. At the last round of UN climate talks, UK, South Korea, Norway and several EU member states pledged $500m over five years to protect the country’s forest through the Central African Forest Initiative (Cafi).

The deal with Cafi doesn’t explicitly call for a ban in oil drilling in the peatlands but in protected areas where it is incompatible with conservation objectives. The money further hinges on the publication of an analysis by the end of 2023 to determine the extent to which mining and oil concessions overlap with or impact protected areas and high-value forests and peatlands.

Eisen told Climate Home the prospect of oil drilling in DRC’s peatlands raised serious questions about the efficacy of the $500m forest protection agreement signed at Cop26 in Glasgow, UK.

“The DR Congo badly needs development but of a kind that benefits both people and the planet,” he said.

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Yet there has been little discussion at an international level on how to handle “overshoot” of those goals. A high-powered commission due to launch in May aims to break the silence.

Climate diplomats are finalising a 15-strong lineup of former presidents, ministers and representatives of international organisations to explore options for deep adaptation, carbon dioxide removal (CDR) and geoengineering, Climate Home News can reveal.

The Climate Overshoot Commission will address sensitive questions around the ethics and feasibility of potential ways to reverse warming that are problematic or unproven at large scale.

“The primary strategy to combat climate change should remain reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but it has also become necessary to explore additional strategies,” Jesse Reynolds, executive secretary of the commission, told Climate Home.

France’s Pascal Lamy, director general of the World Trade Organisation between 2005 and 2013, has been appointed as chair. He is president of the Paris Peace Forum, which will host the commission.

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The idea for a commission to assess climate engineering options was floated in 2017 by Edward Parson, professor of environmental law at the University of California.

Parson became one of 11 on a steering committee of politicians, policymakers and academics to shape what the commission should look like. Among them, five were from developing countries, including Cop27 host Egypt’s environment minister Yasmine Fouad, former Marshall Islands president Hilda Heine and Youba Sokona, vice-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Paris Agreement architect Laurence Tubiana and Janos Pasztor, executive director of the Carnegie Climate Governance (C2G) Initiative, were other members.

“How will the world manage the risk of temperature overshoot? That is the question that nobody is talking about,” Pasztor told Climate Home. “There isn’t enough attention paid to the magnitude of the risk for removing the huge amount of carbon dioxide that will keep us to 1.5C.”

With the latest science showing overshoot of 1.5C, if not 2C, is highly likely, the moment for that conversation may have arrived.

Pakistan’s tree-planting ambition in doubt after Imran Khan’s exit

A paper published in Nature last week gives a 6-10% probability of reaching without exceeding the 1.5C threshold, even assuming all climate commitments to 2030 and mid-century are met.

In theory, global temperatures can be pulled back by sucking carbon out of the atmosphere through biological solutions such as reforestation and technological ones like direct air capture. But tree planting competes with food production for land and carbon capture technology is energy-hungry and expensive.

The latest report from the IPCC concluded sucking carbon dioxide from the air is “necessary” to achieve net zero emissions and “an essential element” to limit heating below 2C by the end of the century.

While no substitute for deep and urgent emissions cuts, carbon dioxide removals are needed to counterbalance residual emissions from hard-to-abate sectors such as aviation, agriculture and some industrial processes.

Five billion tonnes of CO2 would need to be removed each year by 2050 for a 66% chance to limit warming below 2C, under one IPCC scenario, scaling up to 13bn by the end of the century. Any delay to cutting emissions will further increase reliance on removals to stabilise the climate.

A temporary overshoot of climate goals is dangerous for human societies and ecosystems. “Many human and natural systems will face additional severe risks, compared to remaining below 1.5C,” the IPCC’s impact report warned. Some impacts, such as ice sheet and glacier melt and sea level rise, “will be irreversible”.

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Despite the presence of CDR in all IPCC scenarios, efforts to scale up the technology are barely getting started.

An initiative co-led by the US, Canada and Saudi Arabia aims to enable a net reduction of 100 million metric tons of CO2 per year globally by 2030. And there are some efforts to support research in the US and in the UK, and develop methodologies to include removals in carbon accounting in the EU.

Silicon Valley is getting in on the act. Earlier this month, online payment processing platform Stripe launched a $925m fund to buy offsets from start-ups that permanently remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by 2030.

The Frontier fund is financed by Stripe together with Alphabet, Shopify, Meta and McKinsey. It aims to send a signal to researchers and investors that there is a growing market for these technologies.

Climate scientist Zeke Hausfather, Stripe’s climate research lead, told Climate Home that understanding what removal technologies could work at scale and driving their cost down was necessary if they are to be used in decades to come.

Elsewhere, Venture capital firm Lowercarbon Capital launched a $350m fund in invest in carbon removal start-ups and Swiss carbon removal company Climeworks raised $650m from institutional investors earlier this month.

“But the private sector can only push things so far,” said Hausfather, suggesting governments help fund research and development of CDR approaches.

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The issue has been largely ignored at UN Climate Change talks.

For Oliver Geden, a lead author of the IPCC report on mitigation and senior fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, that’s unlikely to change “until there is an acceptance that overshooting 1.5C is unavoidable”.

While “not a magic bullet,” Geden said countries have already said yes to CDR by adopting net zero emissions targets – the “net” being achieved by balancing sources and sinks of emissions.

“I’m of that bottom-up view that countries have a net zero target should and can explore CDR,” he told Climate Home. The alternative top-down approach of sharing out between nations the delivery of removals needed to meet global climate goals brings about considerations of equity and historic responsibility that many wealthy economies are seeking to avoid.

That conversation is uncomfortable for many climate campaigners, who are concerned that a focus on removals is at best a distraction from the need to phase out fossil fuels and roll out clean energy – and at worse a fig leaf for climate inaction.

“We urgently need the weight of global financing to invest in a radical overhaul of our polluting energy, food and industrial systems. But tech bros prefer to throw good money after bad into the carbon removal pipedream, letting polluters continue business-as-usual while appearing green,” Teresa Anderson, climate justice lead at Action Aid International, told Climate Home.

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For MJ Mace, a climate negotiator for the Alliance of Small Island States, there is “a real fear that the pressure comes off emissions reductions” if the issue of removals is pushed too forcefully in the public consciousness.

And yet, if emissions cuts are still lagging behind targets at the end of this decade, “we are going to end up having to rely on CDR on such a huge scale to meet these goals that we are not going to be able to pull it off” unless investment and planning start now, she said. “It’s such a dance.”

If removing carbon from the atmosphere is a sensitive subject, solar radiation management, or geoengineering, is even more so. Still largely in the realm of science fiction, the potential to block the sun’s warming effect by pumping aerosols into the high atmosphere is part of the commission’s mandate.

Pasztor said solar geoengineering is “unbelievably controversial” but leaders have to consider what risks they are willing to take to meet the 1.5C goal.

The Carnegie Climate Governance (C2G) Initiative, which he heads, is hoping to push a resolution on addressing the risks of overshoot at the UN general assembly by 2023.

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The former cricketing star launched the first phase of the “Ten Billion Tree Tsunami” in 2019 to increase forest cover and mitigate impact of climate change on the South Asian nation of 220 million.

The programme was progressing fast, with 1.5 billion trees planted by March this year against a target of 3.2 billion by 2023, but this could hit a snag. Climate action has not historically been a priority for incoming prime minister Shehbaz Sharif or the parties he will rely on to govern.

Malik Amin Aslam, the former climate change minister under Khan, told Climate Home News the tree-planting programme was not a luxury but a necessity for Pakistan, urging the new government to continue with it.

“Climate change remains oblivious to political circumstances in Pakistan, therefore, projects like these need to be above the political divisions,” Aslam said.

The government had allocated 125 billion Pakistani rupees to the scheme ($680 million), of which around 30 billion rupees had been spent to plant 1.5 billion saplings at 9,500 sites across Pakistan.

“Prime Minister Imran Khan kept the project at the top priority even in Covid-19 times and provided all the required funds for it,” said Aslam. “The initiative has helped develop a green image of Pakistan globally.”

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Khan was due to stay in office until August 2023, but an opposition alliance of ten parties toppled his government on Monday 11 April after proving their majority in the parliament.

The country listed the project in its contribution to the Paris Agreement, estimating it would store 500 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent by 2040, if fully implemented. In 2018, national emissions were 489.87 MtCO2e.

“We were in the final stages to secure around one billion dollar [$1 billion] financing for the project from the World Bank under its nature policy based lending,” the ex-minister said. “But this will certainly be at risk now after dismissal of our government.”

Experts have lauded the project as a “game changer” to boost the country’s forest cover and meet international obligations to cut greenhouse gas emissions. They have also demanded an audit of the funds for transparency over how taxpayers’ money has been spent.

“This massive tree plantation scheme is a flagship programme of the outgoing government and it must continue at the same pace to fulfill our national and international commitments,” said Aisha Khan, executive director for Civil Society Coalition for Climate Change in Islamabad.

She said the project had helped increase the country’s forest cover, created green jobs and cracked down on deforestation by the “timber mafia”. This was helping to offset rising emissions from a growing population and industry.

“The new administration should try to plug loopholes in the scheme to further strengthen it like identification of appropriate tree species for specific areas and soils before the plantation drive,” she suggested, and present the project at international forums to secure green financing. “This is a project of national importance and [should] hence be owned by each political party irrespective of their position in the parliament.”

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In 2010, Pakistan had 648,000 hectares of tree cover, covering 0.74% of its land area. In 2020, it lost 69.2 hectares of tree cover, equivalent to 26,100 tonnes of CO₂ emissions, according to the Global Forest Watch.

The project was “an excellent step in the right direction” but required transparency and a complete audit of its funds, said Ali Tauqeer Sheikh, climate change expert and former chief-executive of think-tank LEAD Pakistan.

“There is no city wise data available on allocation, utilisation of funds and subsequent tree plantation,” he said, raising questions over the previous government’s data on afforestation and emissions.

Khan’s party piloted the tree tsunami initiative in Khyber Pakhtunkwa province in 2014, where WWF judged it an environmental success but many complaints of corruption were raised.

“The new administration should have a financial audit of the project to unearth embezzlement in it, if any,” Sheikh said. “And then try to achieve a national ownership for the scheme which remained missing during the previous government.”

Former climate change minister Aslam insisted the project was “completely transparent” and the new government should not try to “reverse or slow down” the initiative.

“The project is globally acknowledged, and it’s designed for Pakistan’s climate compatible future,” he added.

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The report by the General Inspectorate of Finance (IGF), finalised in May 2021 but not published until last Friday, paints a scathing picture of failed forest governance from the top of the ministry down through the administration’s ranks.

It describes “a situation of chaos” which benefits those involved in the sector and slams the “culpable laxity” of the environment ministry.

It finds that the country’s forest code hasn’t been implemented since its introduction in 2002 and that officials repeatedly violated a moratorium on new logging concessions. More than $3 million in royalties are unpaid by logging operators, with officials failing to enforce the tax regime.

“This much-delayed audit report lays bare the lawlessness and impunity that reigns in DRC’s logging industry and yet doesn’t even speak to its severe social and environmental cost,” Joe Eisen, executive director of the Rainforest Foundation UK, told Climate Home News.

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Home to the world’s second largest rainforest and carbon-rich peatland, the Congo Basin is critical to meeting global climate goals.

At Cop26 climate talks, international donors pledged $500 million over five years through the Central African Forest Initiative (Cafi) for DRC to protect the forest. Publication of the IGF audit by the end of 2021 was the first milestone.

Finally released three months late, it makes uncomfortable reading for the DRC government and international funders.

On the eve of Cop26, president Félix Tshisekedi instructed environment minister Eve Bazaiba to immediately suspend all “dubious” forest concessions. But none of the concessions identified in the report were cancelled at the time.

In response, Bazaiba announced the creation of a ministerial commission to revisit all forest concessions in DRC on a case-by-case basis with the aim to recover any illegally allocated concessions.

The ministry added that the report “demonstrated not only the dysfunction in the forest sector” but “highlights the need of a cleaning up of the sector through coercive and urgent measures”.

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Under the deal with Cafi, which is largely funded by Norway, Germany and the UK, the DRC government committed to reduce deforestation, promote the regeneration of eight million hectares of degraded land and forests, and strengthen forest governance and law enforcement.

Subject to certain conditions, it allows for the DRC to lift its moratorium on new logging concessions from 2023. Campaigners argue that in light of the governance failures revealed by the audit, that would be premature.

In a letter sent to Cafi’s secretariat and DRC’s international donors on Thursday, and seen by Climate Home News, forest campaigners called on the initiative to take “take swift and appropriate measures to address [the audit’s] damning findings including that the national logging moratorium be extended indefinitely”.

It called for the cancellation of all illegal concessions, the prosecution and sanction of former ministers and operators that acted illegally and an investigation into the delay in publishing the audit. Failure to act would undermine the $500m deal and any efforts to improve forest governance in the country, it warned.

For Irène Wabiwa Betoko, Greenpeace Africa’s international project lead in the Congo Basin forest, allowing the government to lift the moratorium in this context “would be pure folly”.

“If donors really want to protect DRC’s forests, they have to work instead on cleaning up the mess in the forest sector. It’s not by expanding logging concessions that the DRC government will bring back good governance in the forest sector – it needs a long-term plan for forest protection,” she told Climate Home.

Cafi has a “very important role to play” in doing so, she added. The initiative must ensure that any deal is “helping to stop deforestation, ends impunity and eradicates corruption. Otherwise, it will be money thrown out of the window,” she said.

A spokesperson for Cafi told Climate Home that it “commended” the publication of the audit and would discuss the conclusions with its board. They added Cafi would continue to work with the DRC government “on strengthening forest governance, which requires swift, decisive actions and sustained efforts over time”.

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The audit provides a snapshot rather than the full picture of the situation.

Since the IGF completed its work, campaigners have identified yet more illegal contracts. Greenpeace estimates their number to stand at 24.

Meanwhile, the work of the auditors was made challenging by the lack of accurate information from forest officials and resistance from some logging operators who contested the audit, including the French Compagnie Forestiere de Transformation (CFT).

Only 45 logging companies could be located – a “very limited” number with the majority of operators’ addresses being “inaccurate or simply non-existent”.

While it stopped short of alleging corruption, the report denounced “deliberate favouritism” by ministers in the way some concessions were allocated.

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